...Douglas Adams spinning in his grave.
HHGttG was everything its detractors have suggested, unfortunately. Entirely meaningless digressions, all the genuinely funny situations replaced by watered-down simpering, and a story that was considerably less finessed and meaningful than what Adams was able to string together a frantic week at a time writing scripts to a story that even he didn't know how would end.
They cut the best parts out in order to fit in an completely useless subplot involving John Malkovich, which was just stupid. The radio plays amounted to about two hours of material just as they were; had they been left unsodomized there would have been no need to "edit" the parts that made the plot, as crafted by Adams, fly.
Save your money and the two hours of your life and do something productive. Such as combing the shag carpet.
I saw it last night as well.
While I can see why it annoyed some Adams fans, it wasn't that bad. As Steven King said about a movie that hardly could be recognized from his book, the book is still there.
I could bitch about several things, for example the Marvin voice was not nearly as depressed as in the original radio show. And the plot doesn't make a lot of sense without having read the books. But if you take the movie on its own merits, it's worth the price of admission.
What interested my wife was the audience. A substantial majority of them were under 30. And from the comments the people near us had read the books at least. I was surprised that such people existed in a smallish town in Canada.
BTW, if you see it, stay to the end of the credits or you will miss an interesting part.
Keith Henson
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