Hitchhikers' Movie

So I saw the movie last night, and I've been trying to put my opinion into words. It's a little difficult to do; Neil Gaiman once mentioned that what you want from the new stuff from your favorite author (or artist of other description) isn't something like their last work, but something that makes you feel like you felt when you read their last work. Somehow I have to think about the movie this way, and somehow it lets me down.

Don't get me wrong, I am in the large quite affectionate towards the film. Having at last seen it I think the casting choices basically make sense, and I think it has a vastly better structure than anything a direct translation could form. I can really see the music video and commercial background of the directors at work -- they have a real talent for creating impressive visuals, and they've managed to get a movie with twenty million different looks but a distinct aesthetic. Take a moment for this point, because it's important. The Matrix (whatever you may think of it in the large) looked good because it had a unified aesthetic, an actual look; neither of the first two Star Wars' pulled this off, and they suffer a lot for it. Hitchhikers' is very comparable to Star Wars in this regard: both have a few dozen alien locales to create, and they all have to look very different from each other, but Hitchhikers' manages to fit the disparate pieces into a single puzzle. In some ways, I think the directors were actually perfect, since they got a visual sense of the books into the movie very very well. When a few dozen people lay on the floor of the local pub with bags over their heads, when Ford Prefect wheeled a shopping cart full of beer down a country road, or during the amazing opening montage of the Dolphins leaving (water ballet, more or less, with a full-blown production numbery song), my heart was filled with joy.

Plot alterations. As I've said, there are many many plot changes, and they tend to transform the movie into something substantially more movielike than any previous incarnation of Hitchhikers' has been. A few of them, however, seem to stray from the spirit of the thing -- I can't say too much about the changes that really bothered me because most of them qualify as major spoilers, and of course they're mostly little spiritual kinds of bothering. On the other hand, the dialogue isn't quite on that level.

I remember reading the screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick's self-interview last summer and it filled me with hope. He said so much good stuff about loving the language and ideas of Douglas Adams. Unfortunately, while he seems to understand good words and understand good ideas, he definitely doesn't understand the rhythm of dialogue. Brilliant phrase after brilliant phrase just got slightly changed, just the tiniest little bit, turning hilarious jokes into unfunny ones. Easy example to cite (because it's on the website):

"... Arthur went to a fancy-dress party, and met a very nice young woman, who he totally blew it with."

in the movie, versus

"... Arthur went to a very nice party, and met a very nice girl, who he totally failed to get off with."

in the book. Crying shame after crying, crying shame. Whether the alterations are for clarity or de-Britishization or just 'cause, I can't quite deal. There's also a strange affection for punning that Adams basically avoided; it may just be a subtle thing that only bothers a ridiculous fanboy like me, but the many visual puns are just ... off.

I think the basic punchline is that this edition of Hitchhikers' fails me not because it's bad, but (ironically) because however much I may love brilliant visuals and stunning dolphin songs, it just doesn't make me feel the way Hitchhikers' should. Crying shame.