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DrDog
Reviews
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
A travesty. A disgrace, All our worst nightmares come true
I hate it. I hate everything about it. I want to chase everyone involved down the street with a sharp instrument.
It is indescribably awful. It's all our worst nightmares about what Hollywood might do to it come horribly true.
Every single person in it is individually, toweringly awful. Every single character is horribly miscast. It's as if it were cast by someone who wasn't even familiar with the characters at all.
I was actually looking forward to some change, so I'm not complaining that they didn't "follow the book". But the new stuff was unfunny and pointless and simply made things harder to follow. You can tell the bits that Douglas did, though, and there are a few nice moments when you recognize his writing. But they number about two.
There is no character development whatsoever. I tried to give what's-his-stupid-name a fair chance, but after introducing all the characters, they simply do nothing with them, unless you count the absolutely ridiculous romance subplot involving Arthur and Trillian. He didn't have a chance to show us if a black Ford really worked or not. (But no, it didn't. At all.) They Americanize all the characters except Marvin and Arthur and completely destroy the charm in the process.
It's disconnected and jumpy; jokes and punch lines are inter-cut with unfamiliar and sometimes nonsensical context. It's as if they expect us to laugh at the punchlines alone, because we're so familiar with them. I don't see how someone coming on the movie with no previous knowledge of HHG could possibly enjoy it at all.
The theater was half-filled tonight when I saw it, and what little laughter there was was during narration from the original book.
Individually awful things about it: Zaphod, who they totally and utterly ruined; the ridiculously out of place love affair between Arthur and Trillian; Marvin, who they took about 3 minutes to design; the obviously-made-by-the-Muppet-shop Vogons... it goes on and on. It's bloody awful.
This is just what I was afraid of. Come to www.hitchhikersucks.com and discuss how really, terribly awful this movie is.
P.S. One thing to note in the scene where they're standing in a Vogon queue, the "Your Plastic Pal" robot from the HHG TV show is in the line with them. Nice touch, one of the only ones in the movie.
Martian Space Party (1972)
A very flawed documentary about a very brilliant comedy group
OK, so you know where I'm coming from, I an a paleo-Firesign Fan. Meaning that I adored and still listen to the first four albums, and all the newly discovered radio shows from that era, up to the time this movie was made. So you're not going to hear any criticism of Firesign itself from me - at least, not of that period.
The original uncut audio tape of this live show is floating around the Internet, and is absolutely essential to understanding the piece, because (rant alert) the film itself is basically unwatchable because of the EXTREMELY bad editing and student-film-level production. Whether they were trying to shorten it drastically, or be creative, or whatever, it really, really doesn't work. Punch lines are left out, continuity purposely hacked to pieces, and whole sections of this extremely funny show are simply not there, while other questionable sections (Phil Austin singing) are left in. The overall effect is amateurish in the extreme.
So, it's basically good for seeing video of SOME of the highlights of the show, but the feeling you're left with is wanting to slap the director and editor. It's a real shame, because this is the Firesign Theatre at their best, right before they let personal differences destroy their vibe forever. If you're a Firesign fan, this is a must-own tape, but DON'T use this to acquaint others with the group - it's so hacked to pieces as to be impossible to follow. What a shame they didn't have access to a more professional film crew.