Don't Panic

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Az
Xenophilia

Are you confusing -philia with -phobia?

Technophilia

[Az]

Noway. Goddamn Aliens.

[Zkribbler]

Yeah! They come to our world, steal our women and blow up our planet. Talk about rude!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Sik, it's more than just waving around. People who didn't like the books (such as my friend) thought the movies were better. People in the theater I was in were laughing throughout most of it.

I liked it... then again, I was a fan of the books.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Kaak
They even did a poor job with the voice of marvin...

You're nuts. Rickman's voiceover was one of the best parts of the movie.

Overall, it was a decent movie. Left out a few of my favorite bits, and a lot of the additions were senseless. The female Vice President? Fetching the gun for Malkovitch's character?

The ending was a bit anticlimactic, too. There was at least a pretty good battle sequence in the book. I suspect they changed it to make the movie more kid-friendly (it's reportedly now my nephew's favorite movie, but that will assuredly change when he watches some other movie...).

[Sikander]

I saw the movie today with my gf. Despite it having far more strengths than weaknesses IMO, I found myself curiously unmoved. The movie managed to elicit about three genuine chuckles from me, and not one single good laugh. Hell, I even cracked myself up with my own joke during the film, so I know that it wasn't simply a mood thing on my part. The film simply wasn't very funny.

It's too bad really, as there were some good performances, and no bad ones. Beebelbrox was terrific, and Dent managed to make me give at least a tiny damn about him in the film, something that 4 books never were able to accomplish.

The film was beautiful much of the time, whether it was the retro art deco space impedimentia, trippy improbability drive effects, or scenes of the earth under construction. The muppets were tastefully done for once and in no way detracted from the production IMO.

The pace was at times a bit frenetic, and there was a tendency to use more slapstick than I would have liked, though ironically it was slapstick that came the closest to making me laugh.

The theatre had about 20 people, about half of them young children or infants. I thought that was strange, but then the previews ran and it was all Disney stuff. Was this film purposefully marketed to kids and families? It seems a bad fit for most families, as many parents aren't going to get some of the jokes, and their kids are even less likely to. In any event, no one seemed any more moved by the film than I was. There were only a few scattered laughs throughout the whole film, and the children were never heard from except for the baby who got fussy.

[KrazyHorse]

The film simply wasn't very funny

I agree.

[Jon Miller]

there was a lot missing or that didn't get conveyed

there were several times where they set up funny scenes (fromt he books, only thing I have read), but never completed them

they spent a long time on the vogons, which were one of the points that they conveyed the humor decently on

the 2nd added planet I didn't really get (what was Ford doing? it wasn't funny, etc)

the vogon planet, while funny, occupied time which I thought would be better spent completeling jokes from the book (but I guess I don't fault it too much)

I didn't think that Ford was well cast, and thought that the played up love story was contrived (some of it (mostly wishes on Arthur's part) is in the books, but...)

a number of the changes seemed to be for the worse... (like with the mice at the end.. I thought the books dealing with that was better, as was the books dealing with the whole Questoin)

Jon Miller

[Boris Godunov]

I thought the bit on the Vogon ship where Ford and Arthur are captured came off the worst. It simply wasn't at all funny and fell totally flat. A shame, since that's one of the more memorable parts of the book.

[Vesayen]

The radio show really came first?

[Boris Godunov]

Yes.