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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish  (View post)

Canadian Vegetable [PersonRank 0]

Monday, November 28, 2005
18 years ago

I think some of the bad reviews were because of the existence of a previous version of the movie...

Mike [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I saw the DVD the other day and was incredibly disappointed. It was just not funny. I loved the book, read it more than once even. I heard a lot of bad reviews but went to see it with an open mind but, for once, I completely agrees with the reviews. All I can say is those were 120 minutes of my live I'm not getting back.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Strange. I thought it was very funny. Well, of course if you heard some of the jokes a lot of time (those jokes from the book) they might grow boring after a while... but those jokes were definitely in there (not all, of course, but many).

Personman [PersonRank 8]

18 years ago #

I have to agree with the reviewers. The movie simply wasn't funny. At all. I never laughed. Even more telling, I was watching a rip of a cam bootleg, and no one in the audience laughed. I think maybe the only funny line in the movie was "No, the _other_ end of the universe!" just because of it's clever in-jokey-ness for those of us who know what the book meant.
I swear, if that movie had been entertaining I would have made up for the bootleg by taking a bunch of people to the theater to see it, but I don't think I could have stood watching it again.
Sorry if I sound super-harsh, I mean no personal disrespect... I guess different people just find different things funny. I'd like to think my opinions is the right one, but people seem to be very divided on this one (though overall i think I've heard more ambivalent to negative reviews than good ones) so I'll just have to put it down to people being different.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Yeah, I guess so... and maybe reviews work for some, and work less for others. For example, years ago I went to see the Matrix after reading a terrific review, and then found the movie incredibly silly and unoriginal. But I know a lot of people like it a lot, so...

I wonder how I would have reacted to the Hitchhiker's Guide movie if I didn't know the story so well. Would I have laughed less or more?
I also wonder if the movie's score had something to do with subsconsciously ruining it for some. There musta been something, because it's a fact the jokes were "in there", not to say it's a fact they were funny but the same things as in the book (microcosm/macrocosm similarities, Vogon poetry, Babelfish, how to make a Vogon help his mother, "late as in late Arthur dent", giant whale and bowl of petunias who thinks "oh no not again" and so on) did exist in the movie. And everybody agrees the book was funny.

Or are those jokes which don't work on-screen for most people but work in a book, where they have a totally different pacing and can be made in much more detail?

E.g. I wonder if I would have *understood* any of the Hitchhiker's Guide Entries scenes as they were rushin by incredibly fast. This made it cool when you know them anyway, but what if you never heard of them? Would you "get" the one with the three books, "god's errors", "more errors of god", and "who is this god guy anyway" (paraphrasing)? Would you understand anything at all, like the improbability drive?

Frank Fischer [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

I am commenting on what Mike said. If you REALLY read the book then you would have read the forward and the preface and you would have known that he thought of all of the different versions as TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS. Therefore its not supposed to be like the book.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

It is just a bit like the book... like the computer game was a little bit like the book... like the book itself was a little bit like the radio show... or the TV show... or the comic book...

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