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Mostly Harmless - Another bad movie on the shelves
01 October 2005
What do you get when you mix wry, British satire and nonsense with flaccid American filmmaking that focuses on effects rather than script? Apparently you get an abomination.
We rented Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night - the new Disney version, not the wonderful, old BBC TV series. I had been led by other reviews (notably the review now at Ian Adams' Underground) to expect a stinker, but the real horror doesn't sink in until you watch it yourself. In fact, this film could become a cult in itself as the shining example of the worst remake ever created. It makes the movie Ishtar appear positively brilliant and comical in comparison.
The first thing that struck me is that it doesn't matter how big your budget is if you don't have the foggiest idea what you're doing with characters. British theatre - therefore TV and movies - is all about character. Hollywood has gone another route: it's all about effects. American movie houses crank out easily forgettable films these days full of car crashes, exploding helicopters, gory throat-slashings, graphic jumps into hyperspace... and it seems when they have to work with character alone (as in Monster in Law), they create hideous, wooden, artificial movies that are painful to watch.
The original HHGTTG was created as a radio series by iconoclastic Brit Douglas Adams, one of the Monty Python generation (and friends with same); a brilliant mind that embraced science and philosophy with wit, sarcasm, and biting satire. The characters in the radio series, and later the BBC TV series, were caustic, wry, sarcastic and silly in such an exaggerated way that they transcended caricature. (I had the honour of meeting Douglas at an Infocom party in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s - and he autographed a copy of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I had, conveniently, in my jacket pocket.)
There's a deleted scene on the DVD where the character Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent how he revised the entry in the HHGTTG to read "mostly harmless" from its original one-word entry, "harmless." The reason for the deletion was probably the astounding flatness of the delivery. However, it lends one to apply Douglas Adams' original notion to the film itself. A review of the original TV series could be summed up as "witty" where the revised review of the new film might be "almost witty."
The first thing that struck me - aside from the vapid delivery and dull script, compared to the BBC series - was the added stuff, stuff I'll swear on a stack of Darwins (Adams was an atheist, after all) wasn't in any of the books. HHGTTG went from zany sci-fi adventure to ennui-inducing boy-meets-girl romantic "comedy." One generally devoid of any romantic emotion, however. There are things going on in this film I'm sure Adams would never have agreed to, were he alive.
Adams had been working on a script for such a movie, lumbering on it for more than 20 years, but died prematurely before he finished it. Perhaps he had a prescient vision of what it would become and his heart stopped of fright. The movie ghouls managed to salvage a draft from his estate and, with the help of the usual special-effects development houses, and the "polishing" (sanitizing is the correct term) byKarey Kirkpatrick, cleverly crafted a new script that is almost completely devoid of any of Adam's irreverence and wackiness. But has great special effects (yawn).
The usual suspects are all present - Ford, Arthur, Zaphod, Marvin, Trillian - all played by lightweights who either fail to act their parts with any conviction, or overact (as in the frequently over-the-edge and annoying Zaphod). Too many Americans in the mix - they pasteurize the necessary Britishness right out of the story. There's no synergy among them, either. They act as if none of the others were present.
What really surprises me is that some reviewers have actually praised this film (see Rotten Tomatoes in such a fulsome manner as to suggest they haven't actually seen it, much less read the books (or even watched the BBC series). I have concluded that many reviews are sent in before the movies get viewed, to avoid any unfortunate nastiness, like making the reviewer pay for his or her movie tickets.
For example, in the LA Weekly, Chuck Wilson wrote, ""This very funny, very British movie..." Since it is neither funny, nor very British, his comments suggest Mr. Wilson was actually watching a different film than the one we rented.
Moira MacDonald, in the Seattle Times, wrote, "...the book's goofball -- and very British -- humor survives intact." Obviously we use different definitions of the words "survive" and "intact."
To me, survive means, "... to remain alive or in existence; to carry on despite hardships or trauma; to remain functional or usable; to live, persist, or remain usable." Intact means "Remaining sound, entire, or uninjured; not impaired in any way" or "physically and functionally complete." Neither of these seems appropriate for a movie that has its inspiration hacked to teensy pieces and tossed into a blender with Hollywood goop.
However, Jessica Winter, writing in the Village Voice, captured it quite well when she said, "...Disney's long-in-development film rendition pasteurizes the book's renegade verve with typical means: special effects and gooey romance."
My biggest disappointment was Marvin, the manic-depressive robot. With the voice of Alan Rickman, it might have worked, but Rickman was obviously not in top form (maybe he was feeling too happy that day) when he did the voice-overs, and the robot itself is just too damned cute and cuddly to be the sci-fi Eeyore he should have been.
That's not to say there's nothing good in the film. The Vogons were well-created, and even better than the originals (which were appropriately cheesy). The Magrathea "shop floor" was impressive. And there was a little slapstick humour in the slap-in-the-face plates that kept hitting the characters in the rescue scene, although overall it was repeated just once too often to remain funny. And... well, that's all I can recall. It was as unenjoyable an evening as one spent listening to Vogon poetry.
We rented Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night - the new Disney version, not the wonderful, old BBC TV series. I had been led by other reviews (notably the review now at Ian Adams' Underground) to expect a stinker, but the real horror doesn't sink in until you watch it yourself. In fact, this film could become a cult in itself as the shining example of the worst remake ever created. It makes the movie Ishtar appear positively brilliant and comical in comparison.
The first thing that struck me is that it doesn't matter how big your budget is if you don't have the foggiest idea what you're doing with characters. British theatre - therefore TV and movies - is all about character. Hollywood has gone another route: it's all about effects. American movie houses crank out easily forgettable films these days full of car crashes, exploding helicopters, gory throat-slashings, graphic jumps into hyperspace... and it seems when they have to work with character alone (as in Monster in Law), they create hideous, wooden, artificial movies that are painful to watch.
The original HHGTTG was created as a radio series by iconoclastic Brit Douglas Adams, one of the Monty Python generation (and friends with same); a brilliant mind that embraced science and philosophy with wit, sarcasm, and biting satire. The characters in the radio series, and later the BBC TV series, were caustic, wry, sarcastic and silly in such an exaggerated way that they transcended caricature. (I had the honour of meeting Douglas at an Infocom party in Las Vegas in the mid-1980s - and he autographed a copy of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I had, conveniently, in my jacket pocket.)
There's a deleted scene on the DVD where the character Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent how he revised the entry in the HHGTTG to read "mostly harmless" from its original one-word entry, "harmless." The reason for the deletion was probably the astounding flatness of the delivery. However, it lends one to apply Douglas Adams' original notion to the film itself. A review of the original TV series could be summed up as "witty" where the revised review of the new film might be "almost witty."
The first thing that struck me - aside from the vapid delivery and dull script, compared to the BBC series - was the added stuff, stuff I'll swear on a stack of Darwins (Adams was an atheist, after all) wasn't in any of the books. HHGTTG went from zany sci-fi adventure to ennui-inducing boy-meets-girl romantic "comedy." One generally devoid of any romantic emotion, however. There are things going on in this film I'm sure Adams would never have agreed to, were he alive.
Adams had been working on a script for such a movie, lumbering on it for more than 20 years, but died prematurely before he finished it. Perhaps he had a prescient vision of what it would become and his heart stopped of fright. The movie ghouls managed to salvage a draft from his estate and, with the help of the usual special-effects development houses, and the "polishing" (sanitizing is the correct term) byKarey Kirkpatrick, cleverly crafted a new script that is almost completely devoid of any of Adam's irreverence and wackiness. But has great special effects (yawn).
The usual suspects are all present - Ford, Arthur, Zaphod, Marvin, Trillian - all played by lightweights who either fail to act their parts with any conviction, or overact (as in the frequently over-the-edge and annoying Zaphod). Too many Americans in the mix - they pasteurize the necessary Britishness right out of the story. There's no synergy among them, either. They act as if none of the others were present.
What really surprises me is that some reviewers have actually praised this film (see Rotten Tomatoes in such a fulsome manner as to suggest they haven't actually seen it, much less read the books (or even watched the BBC series). I have concluded that many reviews are sent in before the movies get viewed, to avoid any unfortunate nastiness, like making the reviewer pay for his or her movie tickets.
For example, in the LA Weekly, Chuck Wilson wrote, ""This very funny, very British movie..." Since it is neither funny, nor very British, his comments suggest Mr. Wilson was actually watching a different film than the one we rented.
Moira MacDonald, in the Seattle Times, wrote, "...the book's goofball -- and very British -- humor survives intact." Obviously we use different definitions of the words "survive" and "intact."
To me, survive means, "... to remain alive or in existence; to carry on despite hardships or trauma; to remain functional or usable; to live, persist, or remain usable." Intact means "Remaining sound, entire, or uninjured; not impaired in any way" or "physically and functionally complete." Neither of these seems appropriate for a movie that has its inspiration hacked to teensy pieces and tossed into a blender with Hollywood goop.
However, Jessica Winter, writing in the Village Voice, captured it quite well when she said, "...Disney's long-in-development film rendition pasteurizes the book's renegade verve with typical means: special effects and gooey romance."
My biggest disappointment was Marvin, the manic-depressive robot. With the voice of Alan Rickman, it might have worked, but Rickman was obviously not in top form (maybe he was feeling too happy that day) when he did the voice-overs, and the robot itself is just too damned cute and cuddly to be the sci-fi Eeyore he should have been.
That's not to say there's nothing good in the film. The Vogons were well-created, and even better than the originals (which were appropriately cheesy). The Magrathea "shop floor" was impressive. And there was a little slapstick humour in the slap-in-the-face plates that kept hitting the characters in the rescue scene, although overall it was repeated just once too often to remain funny. And... well, that's all I can recall. It was as unenjoyable an evening as one spent listening to Vogon poetry.
