I have been a fan of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” since the age of 13. At one point, I could quote enormous slabs of the text verbatim. I read the books, watched the TV series, and eventually delightedly discovered the original radio series. I played the computer game when it first came out. I was very disappointed with “So Long and Thanks For All the Fish”, and particularly distressed by the negative vibes pouring out of “Mostly Harmless”, which I’ve still only read once.

So this can’t really be an objective critique, no matter how hard I try. Still, I will try, because the film really is a perfect Film Forensics subject – it certainly isn’t bad, but it isn’t brilliant either. There are some inspired scenes, but it doesn’t really hold together, and isn’t quite as funny as it could be. It’s tempting to just insert slabs of the dialogue from the books, but since I’ve already read the books, this would only go so far to making the film more enjoyable – at best, it would invoke a smile of familiarity, rather than guffaws of laughter. I want new stuff in the Hitchhiker’s spirit, not a simple remix of everything that has come before.

In general – and this is a thesis I’ve expounded on before, so skip to the next paragraph if you’ve heard it – I think Douglas Adams had two contradictory urges as a writer (besides not wanting to write, which he was also rather a martyr to, and which makes him my role-model in yet another way). One, Douglas the Wild, was to describe incredible new worlds and situations, leaving the audience reeling from the sheer rich mess of the universe he has created. The new worlds were parodies, placed there purely for humour value, but it didn’t matter: the Guide hinted at an entire universe of stupendous silliness. The second, Douglas the Obsessive, was the urge to tie every throwaway bit of clever silliness into the plot, cleverly revealing the fundamental interconnectedness of all things and making sense of what had previously been written by Douglas the Wild. I suspect there is a little bit of laziness in the Obsessive approach. World Building is hard. As his career progressed, the Obsessive seemed to be taking over more and more from the Wild. In a way, it’s similar to the career of George Lucas – it starts with a Universe of infinite possibility, and then obsessively revisits the same few things over and over again.

So it’s nice to see that the movie has a good slab of Wildness. There is no sign at all of Obsessive plotting. In fact, it’s a bit of a mess. So, as much as I prefer the Wild to the Obsessive, I’m going to do a bit of Obsessive tidying. The movie isn’t quite free-wheelingly loopy enough to get away without having a plot.

The film starts out well, although it obviously seems a bit rushed – but that’s movies. You have to do a bit of compression. It would have been good to include more of Arthur’s fight with Prosser (as he’s lying in front of the bulldozer and arguing about whether he had adequate notice for the demolition of his home) as it would have nicely informed the scenes on the Vogon planet later. The Vogon planet scenes need a bit of work, and the place to start is here, by showing that Arthur has done a fair bit of dealing with bureaucracy already. The scene doesn’t have to be a great deal longer – it could simply have been done as a montage sequence over the existing dialogue, showing the queues, the forms, and the basement with no stairs containing the disused lavatory with the sign “Beware of the Leopard” and the locked filing cabinet.

Alright, maybe it would have taken a few extra lines.

The film progresses quite well (if, still, a bit rushed) up until the Heart of Gold, and then it starts meandering a little. I’ve read a couple of complaints about Zaphod, and they’re fair enough – he does need to be a bit cooler to convince us that Trillian would have run off with him, and he does need to be a bit more sympathetic. The way that his two heads are separated is interesting, but it could have been used better: the “surface” Zaphod is fun-loving and goofy and a bit thick, and the “underneath” Zaphod is… well, even more so, the extension of fun-loving and goofy into wild and crazy, of thick into reckless. I would change the underneath Zaphod. This is the head that he had to hide in order to become President. I would make the underneath head cold and calculating and driven and very unlikeable – the kind of head that makes everyone want to other Zaphod back.

The books had something a bit like this. Zaphod was hunting for the actual ruler of the Universe, and in order to find him, he had to become President (whose real job was to distract attention away from the ruler). So Zaphod hid away the cold, calculating bits of his brain that would have invalidated him as President, and became the fun-loving etc. Zaphod.

This head could, in fact, be the main villain of the story, driving the plot along. He is the one on the quest to find the Ultimate Question – and who, when he discovers that Earth is the computer doing the calculation, signs the order to blow it up, because he wants to keep the Ultimate Question a secret for himself. He takes Trillian with him because he believes he can calculate the Ultimate Question using her – but discovers she’s been away from Earth too long. Which is why the Heart of Gold picks up Arthur and Ford.

The fun-loving Zaphod might not even know about the calculating Zaphod. When the John Malkovich character removes the hidden head (making the fun-loving Zaphod needs the lemon-squeezer intelligence boost) it’s actually a kind of temporary victory – and when the calculating head comes after him later, having attached itself to the Malkovich character, it’s a more obvious and visceral bad guy – and a stronger story.

The other main scene I’d like to address is the rescue of Trillian from the Vogons. It was rather underwhelming. This is an area in which Arthur should have been outstanding and in total control. He does save the day, but not by any amazing skill. The line about him being good at queuing was good, but here’s where we should make the connection to Arthur’s battle to save his house. He should be an expert at dealing with bureaucracy (and the fact that he ultimately failed in saving his house should drive him to greater heights). Rather than filling out one form, he should take copies of all the forms and get the others to fill them out while they wait. He could locate a form that allows him to see Trillian’s Death Warrant, and quickly point out irregularities on the Death Warrant, causing the execution to be halted while the Vogons are forced to fill out still more forms. Arthur sets the bureaucracy against actually doing anything – like executing Trillian – while getting the necessary forms together to pardon her. Her release is then an unquestionable victory for Arthur, complete with triumphant music.

Most of the rest of the film worked reasonably well. Slartibartfast was excellent, and Marvin – despite not getting enough screen time, and being deprived of some of his best lines – was fine. It would have been nice to have the vice-president being non-Human, as with the crowd at the unveiling of the Ultimate Answer, but I suppose the budget only stretched so far. The tour of the factory floor and the banquet in Arthur’s house Mark 2 were quite lovely and the tour itself was even rather moving.

I think the filmmakers did a perfectly fine job, and had quite a few inspired new touches (the dolphins, the conveyer over the factory floor, the swatters, the first time they used the lemon squeezer). And given that the film did quite well at the box office, I’ll definitely be watching the sequel when the accountants deem that its time has come.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2005 at 1:44 am and is filed under Comedy, Forensic Analysis, H, Science Fiction, shellshear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.