h2g2 : the piece of shit movie

i took W to see "the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" last night.

we walked out, much later than we should have. i can't remember the last time I walked out of a movie (well, we walked out of "The Incredibles", but we walked back in as soon as the theater's power came back).

it sucked. hard.

i could tell W was bored. really really bored. and confused. as in "this is supposed to be funny so why isn't it?" confused.

some review i read said basically the following: those who have read the books or seen the BBC tv show or heard the BBC radio show will be disappointed, and those who have not will be lost.

dead on. i tried viewing it as though I had not read the book a million times, listened to the radio show dozens of times, and seen the TV series twice. in other words, I tried to put myself in W's shoes.

i couldn't understand what the actors were saying (hey, even in my own shoes it was tough to follow some of ford's lines) and when i could understand them, they weren't especially funny.

as a fan of the guide in its other incarnations, i found the following things bizarre and incomprehensible:

1) many of the best jokes were removed. among my favoite lines that were missing (paraphrased):
- the spaceships hung lazily in the sky, in exactly the way that bricks don't.
- arthur: "it's at times like this, when i'm about to be blown out an alien airlock to die in the vacuum space, that i wish i'd listened to what my mother told me when i was younger." ford: "why, what did she tell you?" arthur: "i don't know, i didn't listen"

2) many of the jokes that were left in got butchered. for example, the location of the plans for the demolition of arthur's house ("so were the stairs!")

3) disproportionality of characters. minor (and even miniscule!) book characters (trillian, that malkovich thingy) became major movie characters. why?? there was no love story angle before the movie.

4) compression of plots : some will argue that this is necessary when making a movie from a book, but i will point out that the 2 hour bbc tv series (um, or was it a 6 hour series? i dont recall) didn't mangle plotlines like this one did. and if the movie people didn't have the time to properly explain magrathea and the earth's history (cutting out majikthise and vroomfondel is criminal!) they should have cut out some of the pointless (and not-in-the-book) stuff on vogsphere and the crap with malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich.

to anybody who a) reads my cheesy blog and b) is thinking of seeing the movie (i.e. nobody), i implore you: ask me for a copy of the radio series or come by and watch the tv series.

i would have asked for my money back if anyone had been manning the register. bleh.