Fact: Approximately 47% of all current internet traffic is due to negative reviews of the film adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Source: [transmission garbled…]

I’m going to begin this review with some much needed perspective: FILM ADAPTATIONS ARE NEVER, EVER, NEVEREVEREVER EXECUTED WITH A COMPLETENESS OF FIDELITY TO THE ORIGINAL WORK. PERIOD. FINITO. STOP BITCHING ABOUT THIS.

There. I think that’s a fine way to set the mood.

Armchair Literary Snobs

That’s how I’d describe the source of most of the reviews I’ve seen of the movie so far. Many people seem to be saying the same thing:

It’s like the book in many ways except one: It isn’t funny.

I think that some people had their expectations set in the wrong direction for this movie, and I wouldn’t call that direction “too high.” A film adaptation, if it’s done right, shouldn’t be above or below the book, but off to the side. It should be different. It should add something rather than try to recreate it in a different medium.

That would be stupid.

We need more armchair cinema historians

History demonstrates clearly that there has never been a film adaptation of a novel which resulted in a movie that managed, in every way, to capture the depth and breadth of the book. Most screenwriters and directors, in spite of what you would like to believe, are much too intelligent to try something like this.

But, as I was saying, the past is full of adaptations which failed to satisfy the deliberately ornery. Just about 542 million years after the end of the Paleozoic Era, for example, came the film Dune, released to angry mobs of paperback-thumping Herbertites, decrying the spiritual beheading of their precious little story.

Here’s the deal, though: The movie is great. I’ve probably watched that stupid thing about thirty times in English and ten or so in French (it helps me practice my French, yo).

Did it lose a lot of the detail? Yes. Did it lose a few sub-plots? Sure. But it captured the atmosphere and tone of the book incredibly well. Plus, Sting was in it, and he wore that saucy little leather undergarment with wings (you know what I’m talkin’ about (don’t you?)). Bonus points there.

Then Jurassic Park came along. I remember when it came out and everybody was moaning about how it wasn’t like the book. I watched and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, deciding afterword to pick up the book to see what I might have been missing. If there was more to the story, then I wanted to know about it.

I learned at that young age just how much cheaper ink and paper must be than celluloid. When making the film, care had to be taken only to include the interesting bits, and to do so in a manner which would provide the best possible experience. I might add at this point that poetry works under a similar principle and can result in sensory experiences untouchable by long, wandering prose (like this utter crap).

The book, my friends, was terrible. Michael Crichton is a cookie-cutter, average, unexceptional, uninteresting, paid-by-the-word writer. His writing is edited not just for grammar, but for pizazz as well. Anything that looks interesting gets the chop-chop from his team of editorlawyers.

It couldn’t have been any more obviousilicious that people were complaining just to complain. It’s especially interesting since the kind of person who’s going to get slack-jawed and love-drooly over the sub-par boringness of Crichton's writing is not the kind of person who should be worried about losing something in the transition from trade paperback to screen.

A common complaint which accompanies these types of complaints is that “What I saw in my head while reading the book was so different from what I saw in the movie.”

Well DUH. When you order eggs for breakfast at a restaurant, you often have to specify how you’d like ‘em: Sunny-side up, soft-boiled, scrambled, etc. Left to his own devices, your server will almost certainly bring you eggs prepared in a fashion that might be offensive to your and your gentle palate. So, then, how could you possibly expect a director, out of the millions of different ways a book has played out in different people’s heads, to choose yours? It’s a little more complicated than choosing between poached and raw (or however it is that people like to eat eggs – I certainly don’t know, as I hate the things).

The lesson for all of us is this: People care more about taking the opportunity to be bitchy, snively little snobbits than they do about trying to enjoy themselves in life.

I hope I’ve made my point.

What I thought of this book adaptation…

My review can be summed up in one word, which is rare: Absolutely !@#$ing wonderful.

As a faithful adaptation of the book, it failed in most respects. However, being me, I wasn’t looking for the book, and so was extremely entertained.

How it’s different from the book

First of all, I’m not one of these people who’s read the book a bajillion times and laughs every time the number 42 comes up in conversation. When someone tells me a joke that involves the number 42, I have to pause and remember why it is that I should think the number 42 is funny. It’s important that I do this, as there usually isn’t any other reason for one of these jokes to be funny. When I finally remember where the whole 42 joke started, I’m reminded of the pleasure elicited by reading Adams’ book, and it gives me just enough energy to whimper mirthfully in the direction of my joke-assailant.

In other words, I can’t even begin to claim that I know the differences at any granular level. I’ve just got the Big Things down.

To start, I remember the book being very dialogue-driven. The conversations which took place were the gems. The little narrative blurbs were great as well, but it’s the talking I remember the most.

The movie, on the other hand, is much more character-driven. Rather than what is being said, our attention is drawn more to how it’s being said, and by whom.

I would say that, had the casting been just the slightest bit different, this movie might have been a total flop. Fortunately, though, the casting was dead-on, and everybody deserves an Oscar (that’s one (1) Oscar between them – not each – they weren’t that good).

Another difference is, well, pretty much everything that happens between the beginning of the book and the ending. So, what I mean is that the middle parts are different. The components of the original are there, but they’ve been rearranged to make it possible for the story to flow in such a small amount of space.

This might seem like a cause for concern, but I found all the new additional bits to be fabulous. More on this later.

What works?

Although a lot of the funny dialogue didn’t make it to the screen, the sense of fun was there in its entirety, and a lot of it was in the details.

For example, the next time you’re watching the movie (if there is a next time), pay attention to the scene in which the Heart of Gold is losing control in the atmosphere of Magrathea. Pay close attention and ask yourself why it is that Zaphod can’t seem to get control of the ship. Hint: It isn’t because he’s missing his third arm, as he claims.

In another scene, you just have to stop and think about what you’re looking at: Three men are crouched in their Action Poses in a Vogon administrative office. One man has a towel wrapped around his head in a defensive fashion, another is welding a robot arm as a weapon, and a third is pointing his bling-ring menacingly at an innocent alien while wearing a juicer on his head. My description isn’t meant to capture the humor in the scene, but to jog your memory so that you can laugh now if you didn’t catch it the first time.

There were just so many moments like that, and I’m worried that they were lost on most people. Everything from a happy crab biting the dust to a Vogon running from a bit of terry cloth, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is full of charming little details that are your reward for paying attention to what’s actually happening on screen rather than what you’re expecting to see,

The biggest surprise

What shocked me the most about the movie wasn’t that I found the new parts to be funny, but that I found the original bits to be a bit lame. Something tells me that Adams knew that his dialogue and descriptions wouldn’t travel well to film, and that this is part of the reason it took so long to get a script together. However, you can’t just completely rip every last bit of original content out and hope things will stick, so there were occasional bits of familiar dialogue that just didn’t quite work.

It isn’t that the new dialogue was better, but that the new dialogue fit the tone of the movie.

When something was said which was recognizable from the book, smatterings of little forced-laughs could be heard in the theater. It was painful. And these were people who didn’t seem to think that wearing a juicer on one’s head is something worthy of laughter. Tsk-tsk.

But Chris Sells said that there was an unresolved sub-plot! How can this movie be good?

Chris is totally right. But, the movie is set up to move into sequel mode, and it’s my guess that we’ll see the story move forward, resulting in the resolution of this hanging thread.

I actually welcome the lack of resolution, as it implies this isn’t the last time I’ll get to watch these people act out their various roles so entertainingly.

Final thoughts

I’m going to see it again.

It had all the visual imagination of The Fifth Element and all the subtle humor of something much more sophisticated than itself.

It was a terrible, terrible adaptation of the book, and also one of the best movies I’ve seen in recent memory.

Recommended (in case you didn’t pick up on the subtle messaging of this review).