In the introduction to the More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams writes of the original radio program: "Bats heard it. The odd dog barked."
The long-awaited movie version seems to be met with the same huge flourish of no fanfare at all. Apart from Nik and myself, there were only two other people in the theatre tonight. Granted, it was the last show of the evening, but it was only 9:15 ferchrissakes! On opening night, the numbers should have at least been in the high-tens, if not the low-hundreds.
The movie was... okay. I wish I could be more excited about it, but it rates only a 3 out of 4 for me. Changes were made, to be sure, but it wasn't the things that they added that I found disturbing, but the things that were missing. The Babel Fish was there, as was the explanation as to his curious biology -- but gone was the fact that the existence of the Babel Fish proved beyond a doubt the non-existence of God. The Guide itself was there, with its helpful entries on Deep Thought the Supercomputer and Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters, as well as a few new tidbits, but there was no entry for towels, dispite the fact that everyone kept asking Arthur if he had his. To the casual viewer, I can only imagine this was confusing -- although much use was made of said towels, without the entry in the Guide, and the accompanying explanation of the towel's main use as a status symbol ("That frood really knows where his towel is at."), it seemed to matter very little.
Casting-wise, I have to say that everyone was excellent -- Bill Nighy is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. Zooey brought something to Trillian that I'd never seen in the book or TV show, Mos Def was surprisingly good as Ford -- though, again, different. The only let-down was, sad to say, Martin Freeman as Arthur. I've come to the conclusion that he simply wasn't playing Arthur Dent. Much as I love Freeman's "Tim" from The Office, his character in this movie wasn't very far removed from that one, and it was just the wrong way to go.
In all, apart from a few nit-picky problems with story editing (Arthur tells Ford the Tricia McMillan/Zaphod story -- in flashback, no less -- before we meet them in the movie, thereby ruining the surprise when Arthur says, upon being introduced by Ford to Zaphod, "Yes, we've met!") we enjoyed ourselves, though it was hard to tell what the rest of the audience thought, as Nikki and I were in the front row, and the other two guys were in the back. Were they fans, or just there to see what it was all about? We'll never know. Though I can say without a doubt that I was the only one there this evening carrying a towel.
