I agree with this post. For much of the movie, I found myself longing to be elsewhere re-reading the books or listening to the old radio broadcast that I still have on audiocassette.
I found many of the lines hard to understand due to the thick Brittish accents. Seems like sometimes the actors were just talking way too fast, running their words together. Other times the background noises drowned-out the lines. I could hardly hear any of the lines in the beginning because of all the machine noise at the construction site. I often found myself disconnected from the movie while my mind recalled some of the missing lines from the book.
My friend who had no experience with THHGTTG had zero idea what was going on and I got the feeling that if he had been there by himself he would have walked out around the time the Heart of Gold turned into a rubber duckie.
That’s exactly how I felt… that and wondering what book they thought they were making a movie of, again.
There isn’t a big enough “Feh” smiley in the world for this movie… not actually evil, but badly-written, officiated, callously re-written, and bureaucratic. They couldn’t tell a joke to save their own… eh, you know the rest. My heart just isn’t in it anymore.
The very idea of Ford Prefect thinking CARS were the dominant lifeform is just plain idiotic for someone in his profession. Which part, exactly, did he expect it to place in his hand? Sorry folks, that was not the joke. You missed it, like you missed so many others, when you made this… thing.
I may have to change my username. And I just renewed.
Indeed. I’m left to wonder what other joke someone might have mistaken it for. I’m not saying people are wrong for not liking this movie, but people seem to be not liking it for a bizarre, nitpicky, series of reasons.
Hello again! I have now seen the movie four times. It develops nicely with repeated viewings. Next, I reviewed the TV version, which I’ve thought was extremely awkward but with a charm of its own. It includes many of the regrettably missing lines, and the action really drags as a result. I really want a middle ground here, because the movie did seem to cut some of the jokes in half, rather than avoiding them altogether.
As stupid as the Zaphod-heads in the movie were, they were a lot easier for me to look at than an actor with a stupid fake head on his shoulder like some type of conjoint fractional twin. If someday a sequel permitted Zaphod to say he’d developed a way to integrate both brains within a single cranium, I would be slightly bothered for about a minute, then happy.
Oh, hey, my British cousins? I first read the book about a year after its American publication, while living uneventfully in Nashville, Tennessee. Never set foot yet in Britain. It took me about ten seconds to realize that Prefect was the name of a Ford car model. I really never checked out the details with my friends, but none of us was confused about that joke, to the best of my recollection. Sheesh.
I definitely want this movie on DVD, to balance out the TV and the radio versions, all shelved with the books, just for my own total experience.
As I’m currently re-reading the novels right now and halfway through the second book, I’ll say it’s pretty easy – en route to Milliways, the Heart of Gold gets pursued by the Vogons again, who are being hired by Gag Halfrunt to nuke the Earthlings and ensure the Ultimate Question never gets revealed (toss in a quick line about how the Magarethan reboot is doomed to failure because there aren’t any original Earthlings on Earth MKII and you’re set). Then segue to Zaphod’s seance, the Megadodo Publications office, Zaphod and the Total Perspective Vortex, etc., etc. Only problem is that you end up ditching Arthur, Ford, and Trillian for the first half of the novel, but maybe you can throw in a new parallel story arc about recovering Zaphod’s second head to keep them busy…?
Though I have to say that re-reading the novels re-emphasize that they, too, weren’t really laugh-out-loud yukfests to begin with. The real strengths of the H2G2 novels are in Adams’ skills with wordplay, and his cock-eyed look of humanity from an alien’s perspective, neither of which translate very well to any movie adaptation IMO.
For me, that was one of the better laugh-out-loud moments of the film. Watching Ford actually go through the motions was funnier than just reading it.
I thought Arthur’s calling her Trish was intentional, partly to try and remind her of her connection to him, and partly out of disdain for the name Trillian, which he sees as being too influenced by Zaphod.
I enjoyed it, but I thought it started to drag on towards the end.
anyone else notice the first page is full of really positive reviews, and they gradually sour until page three, where the tone is largely negative?
What’s this yarn gag? I saw the movie, but my memory’s pretty fuzzy, and nothing is coming to mind when people say “the yarn bit”
The “improbability drive” was actually one of the funnier running gags throughout the movie. They would change into “nonsensical” things at random until they arrived, then they would change back. During one trip, instead of showing the montage of silly items as they usually (quickly) did, the whole crew of the Heart of Gold changed to “yarn creatures” and the movie showed a long (well, half a minute, maybe) animated sequence in which they were all composed of yarn (Think “Wallace and Grommit” in yarn instead of in clay).
I thought the movie was pretty decent. Not as funny as it could have been, perhaps, but not bad or terrible by any means. I enjoyed it, laughed in parts, and smiled most of the way through.
I never read the series myself, although I have been familiar with some of the better known “jokes” for many years (such as the fact that 42 is the meaning of life). My wife has just gotten the paperbacks and is reading them (halfway through the second book now) and she has been reading me sections and explaining other sections so it’s not like I was a complete novice as I watched.
In the book, as you quoted, the joke was that Ford thought that Ford Prefect was an inconspicuous name (probably because the Prefect was a common and inconspicuous car). That was the joke; not that he thought cars were the dominant life form. (Going from memory here, so if there’s a quote in the book that says otherwise I’ll stand corrected.)
I still say Mos Def’s delivery was wrong. In the book it was like: ‘So this is it. We’re going to die.’ ‘Yes, I’m afrai… Wait! What’s this switch?’ ‘We’re not going to die?’ ‘Just kidding. We are going to die.’ In the film it was like: "Hey, does this do anything? I guess not. Oh, well.’ Much funnier in the book. I don’t remember how it played out in the original film; but since I don’t, I’m thinking it must have been closer to the book. (I can’t be arsed to find out which box my tapes are in, so I ordered the DVD yesterday. I’ll be able to check in a few days.)
Yeah, I noticed that a bit. I made my first post without reading the whole thread. Most of it is griping about what was wrong with the film. But I still enjoyed it. It just doesn’t stand up well against the book; nor, IMO, against the BBC version.
Au contraire! I thought the books were gut-busting! But then, I’ve always looked at Humanity as being rather silly. (Maybe I’m an alien? )
Not the deepest observation, but did anyone else notice that Trillian has very red hair at the beginning of the movie, and dark borwn hair near the end?
Well, the second quote from my post was from an introduction written by Douglas Adams where he says, in so many words, “He had simply mistaken the dominant life form.” That Ford utters the same phrase in the movie was, to me, a reference to this quote.
Admittedly the quote isn’t from the text of one of the novels, but that introduction has appeared in most of the omnibus editions of the (increasingly inaccurately named) Trilogy, and is actually from Douglas, so I guess I’ll take Douglas’ word as to what the joke was over yours.
One thought on the missing “mostly harmless” line… In one of the trailers, there’s a scene where Ford is showing Arthur the Guide. “What’s that?” “This is the Guide. It contains everything you need to know to get along in the Universe”. This wasn’t in the theatrical movie, but it seems reasonable that it might show up on a director’s cut. If so, that would be the same scene where the “mostly harmless” line would fit in, so we might see that yet.
And I’ll agree that both Ford and Deep Thought were nothing at all like I had pictured, but I think that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Things like having Deep Thought having this unobtrosive, nonthreatening woman’s voice (instead of a seven-foot-tall man who’s been smoking cigarettes for his entire life) just adds to the general atmosphere of absurdity about the whole series.
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