A Life Less Interesting

Ok, so I'm a little late on this one, but I finally got round to seeing the H2G2 film over the weekend.

I'm a big fan of the books and radio shows but I must admit to being left cold by the film.

The film loosely follows the plot of the first book but it seemed very rushed. Lots of the classic scenes were missing, or cut down to unrecognisable facsimiles. The jokes that remain seem to be included as a nod towards the viewers who are already familiar with the series.

For example before leaving Earth, Ford makes a show of trying to find a towel. He uses it on a number of occasions during the film, and even goes so far as to say that you should always know where your towel is. However, he never says why, and that’s where the joke is. It might be funny to a new viewer purely because its rather eccentric behaviour, but the original joke detailing the many uses for towels is not there.

With so much missing and trimmed it seems odd that they would include brand-new material that wasn’t in any of the books (to my recollection anyway....) For example, Trillian gets captured by the Vogons, and the group travel to the Vogon home planet to rescue her. Since the main audience for this film are the people who enjoyed the original works, it seems an odd decision to replace the material people want to see with brand new stuff.

I didn’t particularly like Arthur in this version, but that may just be because I am so used to Simon Jones portrayal of him. I thought that Zaphod was awful, entirely unlikable and incredibly annoying.

On the plus side, I thought the Vogon models were very well done, the opening song is rather good and the sequences featuring entries from The Book are good.