Mostly Harmless

I saw Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last night. It had some inspired bits of lunacy, and there were a few scenes that translated the book as perfectly as anyone could ask for. But I can't shake a persistent feeling of disappointment. It's wasn't a bad film, but it wasted a tremendous number of opportunities and made more than a few bad decisions.

Much has been made of the film's truncating much of Douglas Adams' jokes to the point where they lose most of their bite, or humorous scenes from the book playing out oddly on the screen. That's apparent, and unfortunate, but misfires are to be expected. These are readily counterbalanced by the wonderfully loony Infinite Improbability Drive sequences, the sperm whale and--ultimately--Slartibartfast on Magrathea. Slartibartfast is glorious, and the planetary assembly floor is "mind-boggling huge."

But to get to the good stuff you have to sit through one of the most mind-numbingly forced romances in all of cinematic history, that between Arthur Dent and Trillian. It's awful. It doesn't work, and every time the filmmakers return to this subplot everything grinds to a halt. There are tangents and digressions to the story inserted simply to show how madly and deeply these two care for each other, and how far they are willing to go for that love. Bollocks. Even the scene where the Vogons are feeding Trillian to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal comes off as limp and flaccid, with nary a towel to be seen in the scene. I ask you, what is the point of a Bugblatter scene is you don't include a towel? You lose the entire punchline! Which is, of course, the biggest problem with the film. Lots of jokes are set up, with the punchline never delivered. In a misplaced effort to develop some "character arcs" and inject a level of angst and poignancy to the story, there are new instances of Heartfelt Revelation from Trillian (oh, woe is me. I am woman, and Taken For Granted By Menfolk) and Arthur (All I need is love/love is all I need). There is much token anger and wringing of hands over the destruction of the Earth, but geeze, folks, trying to inject the post-cataclysmic depression angle popularized by the new Battlestar Galactica into Hitchhiker's is simply a bad, bad, bad idea. The books, as well as the radio show, worked because of heavy doses of irony, satire and irreverant cheekiness. When you try and add Deep Emotional Underpinnings--especially at the expense of those other elements--simply to try and make the film more accessable to mainstream audiences (which strikes me as the very obvious culprit at work here. I mean, Arthur and Trillian? Gimme a break!) then you eliminate what made the property successful in the first place.

And Adams also said the biggest problem with his book was that it had a very long beginning with an abrupt end. A movie needed a middle part. After seeing the aimless and nonsensical meanderings that made up the "middle bit" of this film--including a handful of extremely funny bits--I'll have to vote for extended beginnings if there's nothing better to replace them with.

In the end, it reminds me of those horticulturalists who are attempting to breed a new variety of habañero chili pepper that has no heat, so that people who don't like hot chili peppers will buy them, too. Sure, everyone could eat them, but why would they want to? What's the point?

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