Caught The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on DVD and was, to my surprise, very nonplussed. I love the books, thought the casting and design elements I had seen seemed right, and had read some good things interspersed amidst the bad, but in the end the whole thing just kind of fell apart, and I'm not sure why. The acting was good, with some casting extremely right (Arthur, Trillian, Marvin); Douglas Adams was involved and wrote the screenplay, and was able to include many of his own classic lines and bits from the novels; the look was mostly spot-on, with appropriately ugly Vogons and a great design for the Heart of Gold; and the tone of off-hand detached British satire seemed to be present. It should have worked. But it didn't. So what went wrong? I have no idea. The love story aspect was forced and out of place, to be sure, but it was far too minor to take down the film on its own. It's a mystery. Maybe the material is just not meant for the screen, maybe the particular vibe of these books, through some fundamental aspect of its nature, requires the words on the page. But the successful radio drama of the same material (which I've never heard but from all reports is great) would seem to scotch that idea. In the end, I can't think of a real reason for the movie's staleness, it's flatness as a living piece of cinema. All I know is that it didn't work. Odd.
Until Whenever
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