Late reviews

Okay, these issues need to be addressed (and the address is 1234 Fake Street--BAM!): What up with two of the early summer blam-fests? Therefor...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Okay, so when I heard there would be a film of this, I finally got off my illiterate ass and joined an intensive ESL class (seemed faster than those damn "Run Lola Run" books, or whatever they're called). Having learned to read, I picked up (more appropriately "hoisted") my roomate's copy of the Hitchhiker series, and plowed through it. Much of it was vaguely familiar, having seen the oh-so-amazing BBC miniseries long ago ("it's like someting from a dream..."), but much more was not, and I came to the conclusion that the series is hilarious, brilliant, overwhelming, and deep, and, in the end, pointless, and poorly planned. The books set themselves up to be all of those positive adjectives and more; one feels each book leading up to something huge, and when you get to the last page, eyes wide, breath held, hand covering up the next line to stop yourself from skipping down (anyone else do this?)... it just ends. Every book feels like it needs a conclusion. Or perhaps, every element in the series ought to mean more, as it seems to believe it does. Things are picked up and dropped off-handedly, and if they show up again it's unrelated. I enjoyed the books immensly, but, fianlly, they were just passing entertainment, and not the knock-you-on-your-ass that the hype surrounding them (and that I detected in the books themselves) insinuates.

Having said that, I still found myself, in the theatre, going "What? That's not how it goes! I'm not so sure about this..." The movie, like the book, was so fast and confusing and had so much going on, that my idea of holding onto "what the book did" and being able to quickly compare and contrast it with "what the movie did" was... what's the phrase? Ah yes: clusterfucked. This film has once again smacked my crappy face with the obvious and necessary notion that a film and a book are different, and if I try to make them the same, my brain will break. Or possibly shatter. In any case, a small, funny noise will accompany this, and half of my body will go limp. That is to say that the book is perfectly safe and unchanged by anything made in it's name, after the fact. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest demonstrates that brilliantly, with both a fantastic book and an amazing film, and which differ from one another greatly. The book has no Jack Nicholson, but the film has no crazy Chief's POV dream sequences (Tim Burton, I'm looking at you...). This notion is also helpful with the slew of remakes these days: Batman Begins can stand on it's own, and doesn't say anything about the first (and best) Batman movie (with Michael Keaton, not the Adam West one). Oh, am I jumping ahead? Let's get back to The Hitchhiker's Guide.

I ended up seeing the film a second time, once the memory of the book had faded (I used a lot of beer to accomplish this quickly), and I really really liked it! The beats work very well, the jokes all have an excellent weight to them, never being a huge deal, but also each having their own place. The effects are fantastic. Every time they'd try to wow us with the scale of something (which is what these stories are really about: the universe being big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. And so on.) they wowed us. They sort of used what we've all seen in sci-fi CG movies to their advantage, and just when we're thinking "Oh I've seen this already" they'll twist it or expand upon it and suddenly we're wowed again. And the rhythm was fast, which is exactly what the books warrant from a film-version. When the film would go off on some side adventure that wasn't in any previous Hitchhiker's Guide incarnation (there have been like six), it didn't interrupt the flow, or seem unnatural. It fit right in with the weirdness! And speaking of weirdness, the Vogons looked great. They were everything a British-born space monster ought to be. Big, ugly, outraogusly life-like. It's so cool that the director decided against using CG for these creatures--the Jim Henson crew did a fuck of a good job. Only when the Vogon "soldiers" lined up to kill our heroes did the original "Vogonity" start to waver: I felt the tension of these moments was little to none, since the whole point is that Vogons suck at taking any action. We know they're incompetent, and horrible marksmen, so why are our heroes scared? Perhaps they needed an elite species for the face-offs, that could provide a bigger threat. Vogon Navy Seals or something.

The romance seemed a bit unfounded (I see why Arthur wants Trillian, but why does Trillian feel the same?), but it remained sweet, so it wasn't off-putting. Mos Def is a really good actor, I don't care what anybody says, I want to see more of this charming rapper/actor (or "raptor" as I prefer). And Marvin was perfect. The bulky 50's sci-fi look he had in the miniseries was too obvious. In this film, they went for a more streamlined, though still goofy look (for Marivn and the starship Heart of Gold), like Apple Computers is designing everything. Alan Rickman is clearly a popular guy to cast nowadays, but for good reason. And The Guide! Holy crap how beautiful was this thing? Stephen Fry + Flash animation is the best thing since sliced bread (and if you can toast it while you slice it, even better!). It showed up exactly when it needed to, to clarify and expand upon something, and the accompanied visual gags (all original) were perfect. Somebodies gonna have to make an actual Hitchhiker's Guide just so we can se more of this thing.

In the end, this film is worth seeing many a time. A good solid story (even if nothing really happens) that never loses it's way (even though it makes a point of losing it's way), with acting and visuals to support, while going way beyond, the material. And what about that cameo?!

Still to come: Sin City and Batman Begins. (At least I already got the remake discussion out of the way!)