Who is this guy directing this movie? Whar do you know about him?

Garth Jennings is a wildly inventive, extremely talented director of music videos and commericals. Is he a good feature film director? We'll see...

MJ Simpson knows a huge amount about Adams, and loves the radio series and the books... but that might be the problem. A lot of his critique sounds like he just can't see beyond the changes and omissions from his favourite versions of the story. I'm a huge fan as well, but I want to see this movie for the changes, the new stuff. Yes, the line "they hung in the air in exactly the same that bricks don't" - one of my favourite lines ever written - is apparently missing, but I'm not fussed. I've heard and read that line already, more times than I can remember, in almost every medium going. I don't think I'd get much more out of it by seeing it again on film.

I was supposed to be going to a press screening in a few days, but now I can't make it. I'm really annoyed, but I'm sending along the only person I know who loves H2G2 more than me... I'll see what he thinks...

I don't get the complaints about scenes being cut out of the book. Movies are shorter than books, nature of the beast, and so stuff has to come out. Given the long term involvement of Douglas Adams on this film, one can hope that the cuts were made with his general agreement. Think of the LotR films, they were amazing but even in the pushed to the breaking point length of the extended editions Peter Jackson had to leave out some beloved scenes and characters.

Isn't this directed by Hal Roach (who direct the Austin Powers movies)?

I reserve judgement on this because I admit to not having read the book, nor caring about it really.

But wasn't there a British version produced several years ago? By the BBC, shot on video? Or is my memory really hazy, confused with another production, perhaps Red Dwarf?

Maybe this movie preserves the basic plot and quirky "spirit" of the novel, but cuts out a lot of the arcane details from it in order to scale back on the running time.

Yes, there was a BBC TV version of HHG made years ago, featuring the actors who did the voices in the original radio series, they repeated all the episodes after Adams' death.

I'm also a huge fan of the books/radio series so no doubt I'll be dissapointed by missing lines/scenes, but I also accept that it has to be trimmed in order to work as a film, and I'll try to judge it on it's own merits.

I'm looking forward in seeing it. I have vage memory of the BBC show. I have never read the book or listen it on radio. So I will enter it with fresh look.
Donna A.

The fact is, all the versians are different and have been designed to fit in with their text type.
I myself am looking foward to the movie, due to the following reasons:
1. The guys at Hammer & Tongs (http://www.tongsville.com/) who are directing and producing have done some really great music videos such as the Fatboy Slim one showing the evolution of man. They're also big H2G2 fans.
2. Bill Bailey of Black Books fame voicing the whale.
3. The trailer with narration from the guide is just plain cool.
4. It's Disney, but the company hasn't really been involved in it. Just imagine if they had.

One die-hard fan with a vendetta against the film because they didn't bring in the living-dead corpse of Adams to finish work on it isn't going to change my mind.

I also read that review, and it did sound like the typical sc-fi geek who refuse to except change. Even though Hitch-hiker's has changed in every incarnation. From the radio series to the books to the brilliant BBC television production.

I am really looking forward to the film version (espiecially after seeing the trailer, funny Ka-Ka and very much in keeping with the spirit of the series).

I'm going to a press screening on Weds eve and will let you know if this is just some rabid fan or if the Guide has coem up trumps!?

Fingers crossed it'll be good...

I'm a fan of the book so I'm going to go into this movie under the assumption it will suck and see how I come out.

I am also a huge fan of the books. But also the Radio Series and the television series. And from what I have been reading the film was based on Douglas Adams final draft of the screenplay.

BTW. If you go into the theater with the assumption that the film will suck, then it will suck. So please wait and see...

Im looking forward to the movie, that reviewers critiques are to be expected, along with controversy over the cast but it looks like it's shaping up to be interesting to me.

I have HHGG blog with new info posted every day. Also a link to free movie tix for the UK Apr 16-26.

http://hitchhikers-guide.blogspot.com/

Right. My mate just saw it. He's a massive Hitchhiker's fan, and I'd trust his opinion above almost everybody else.

He absolutely bloody loved it. He said it actually got quite emotional for him (and even more so for the guy sitting necxt to him, who was also a huge H2G2 geek), just because it was such a fine culmination to such a long and painful process.

At the end, it's dedicated to Douglas. He said it's a fitting tribute. And that's good enough for me.

Vogon poetry is great in comparison to this movie. How can anyone stuff up a radio serial so badly?
Watching this film was like watching a good friend murder an incredibly funny joke. Occaisionaly the film delivered. Maybe even 50% of it was clever in its interpretation. Obviously its hard to fit even just the first radio series into the film. I accept that bits are left out. But to invent a load of garbage that dominates the middle of the movie is a crime. Not only is the garbage not funny or clever, it is a waste of film time.
You'd think it would be relatively easy to follow a script and deliver the great lines that are contained in it.
Get hold of a copy of the radio serial and enjoy your brain's pictures.
Having said all of that, the characters are great, and the actual effects are used well to put ideas accross. Which makes it all the harder to understand how the film makers got it so bad.

I'm sorry but they have completely changed it. The jokes are gone, the point is gone, they've made up crap. I bet Douglas Adams is spinning in his grave.

All of the best bits are gone, they haven't trimmed for time, if you want that then look at the tv series which is just as good as the books.

What pisses me off most si that they've rewriten most of it and now have rewriten the book to go with the movie. Re-writing Adams is like re-writing the bible. The books, the radio and the tv series were all made so well, the captured every part of the story. This just changes it. Now generations of people who have heard from us how great it its are going to be thinking that the film is just like the books.

Let's put it this way folks... the books are long. Lord of the rings long. Translating it to the small screen produced a giant bloated thing that was longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Yes, your favorite jokes were left out... all the more reason to read the books again. Get over it.

As for the 'script changes that piss you off'. Adams wrote the script, including the new character and rewritten middle. He didn't want the movie to be a clone of either the radio play, tv series, comic book, or novels... but it's own creature.

Personally, I didn't want to see a summarized version of the previous material... so I was pleased. Overall, the movie is what it is... a giant advert for the books. It's popcorn, and the books are the steak dinner. Does that mean you should hate popcorn? No.

See, the movie isn't Star Wars... it has to appeal to both fans and people who've never read a single page. It cannot afford the luxury of focusing it's efforts on the diehard crowd. Adams considered it a great challenge to balance fan service and making a film everyone could enjoy. Love it or hate it, this is his baby...

I understand how hard it is for some people to let go and just enjoy something for what it is. Get over it. Enjoy what's on the silver screen... it's a fun romp. Understand that there WILL be a longer cut for DVD. Understand that there WILL be deleted and extended scenes.

Go. Watch with an open mind. Enjoy. It's a movie everyone will have to see for themselves. ^_^

Thank goodness someone finally got it right. Kudos Akitsu.

I guess some people think it's just fashionable to hate. I was going to skip it because of all the negative stuff people were griping over... but now I'm going to see it for my damn self.

Any fan of Adams who snubs this film for petty reasons is a fool. Love it or hate it, this movie deserves top box office first weekend... if only to get people interested in the books.

It's got a snowball's chance in hell of beating out Star Wars... so show your damn support the first day. If you like what you saw, go back over the weekend. Let's get this puppy into the number one slot.

i've read the books, haven't seen the movie yet but I cant wait to see it now. I dunno what to think of the movie so far though, i've seen the trailer for it and mervin looks like some dude with a massive ping-pong ball for a head and i always imagined the vogons resembling something of a kling-on or watever from star trek (i wonder why? the name maybe..) but no they look like the hunchback from notra-damn from those pictures. The book was very clever but ill admit i couldn't quote very much from it, just that i found the golgafrenchins absolutely hilarious.
Just relax people and take akitsu's advice coz it's there for your entertainment so look on the bright side. but still i do hate mervin's look, i can't tell if he was made that way because it was funny or because his "brain the size of a planet" remarks

I was disapointed in the movie.
not only did it not stick to the original script but it would be hard to beleive that Douglas Adams would come up with the extra scenes they put into it.
The movie needed a central conflict and they made it into a love story, the genius behind the books is that there wasn't a central conflict, it was just a witty narrative of a series of events.
for all the work they did on the extra scenes (like dolphins singing? - Trillian's heartbreak and confusion) they could have peiced together the orignal work putting in important explanations, like exactly why everyone was carrying a towel, becuase nobody in the theatre understood.
only a few scenes pulled through and i liked Ford and Marvin's character a lot.

I had read an early bad review and went into the film Trying to like it, i did not expect it to be as disapointing as it was.

My expectations for the movie arent very high-- I dont think I'll be dissapointed. I should hope the movie doesn't try to folow the book closely( an impossible task) Is a movie did try to incorperate al the brilliance of the 'trilogy' it can only fail miserably. Therefore, I will go watch it and maybe, if it's original, artsy, and moves nicely, I can very easily enjoy it. And I can keep all the best parts for my imagination.

I don't understand how the book could have been done any better than this. Well, and kept it under 8 hours long....

The people are there and so are the characters. I've read the book and I adored the movie. It is just outlandish enough that it works for me. That's saying a lot because I went in expecting the worse and was pleasantly surprised.

The casting is fine and so is the acting except that I do think that Sam Rockwell is a bit more over the top and there is this thing he does (won't spoil it) that I found a bit jarring and then just annoying.

I came out of the movie with the opening song stuck there and hummed it all the next day. I haven't done that in ages.

That said...I saw a preview on Starz that I found very disjointed and just not very good...so if you saw that...don't judge the movie...it's much better than the preview...

so...I'll close here....

So long and thanks for all the fish......

Annie

for shame!

3 weeks after having seen it and re reading what I wrote, time has been kinder to the movie.
In retrospect, I'd have preferred the movie to have stayed closer to the original script.
BUT I will take my son to see it as I suspect it is aimed at children.
It is a good introduction to the radio series, and looking at it this way it makes sense that it isn't what would have been great.
I'd have loved to have seen it given the same treatment as LOTR and included so much more, as the actors do a great job, and the visuals really work.
It does come across as a Reader's Digest Condensed Film with chopped dialogue, boiled down plot, and missing explanations.
BUT, it was entertaining for a lot of people in the cinema I saw it with, but not as much for those who expected more

Hey, just because i saw and loved the tv-series as a schoolboy does not mean i am not capoable of some objective opinion. I hope.

Of course you cannot easily show the tv-series to a young person today without them simply sneering at the crappy bbc 'special fx'. However, i believe the comic timing there still works well; i think the dryness of BBC cheap drama befitted Adam's dry englich humour. But as for the film...

I think the comic timing almost always just misses the button. The director does not understand the value of silence within a joke (and thus does not understand Douglas Adams' writing): here the silences are filled with unnecessary dramatic music and general chaos which drowns the jokes. Many of the best jokes of the book/tv-series have been dropped, other rearranged into unfunny order. -- Many characters have been changed to the point where the surviving jokes no longer fit in the character's mouths. Even Arthur Dent's galaxy-quest for a good old cup of tea falls flat in Martin Freeman's sleepy protrayal.

All this is a great shame. When i first read the casting, much of my initial concern was tempered. Freeman has proved himself as a 'buddy' actor. but here i felt no real connection between Arthur and Ford, or even between Arthur and the Galaxy. Freeman seems to wander around mostly unsurprised and passionless. So why should we care about him? I believe Adams loved Arthur dearly. If we do not, then the story is lost.

Alan Rickman as Marvin and Stepehn Fry as The Book also both seemed perfect voice choices. However, again their best lines are mis-timed or wrongly intonated. --

Also there are a few major script changes that take further edge off Adams' original tone. Mainly, a love story. I suppose this is a requirement when you're working with american money. But here, the director (and executive producers) apparently believe that that story is more important than the story of the book. The original book and tv-series is a story about the book itself (hence the title). Here, the book takes a relative backseat. (I found even the book visuals were better in the tv-series 25+ years ago.) And the rest of the plot seemed needlessly muddled too.

i saw this film with a friend who has never read the book, nor heard the radio series or seen the tv series. she did not have a clue what this film was about and she laughed mildly once. Another friend took her intelligent 7-year-old (he prefers story to c.g.i.) and he came out indifferent.

I am not a purist, but -- for all those who like to ignorantly criticise and ridicule die-hard fans -- please note: this film is missing the vital ingredient: vision. -- If you haven't yet seen it, and you're not just a c.g.i. junkie, I advise you watch the tv-seies instead.

I was sitting open mouthed this movie was so bad.

The BBC managed to create fantastic radio and TV series with typical BBC budgets i.e. Bugger all!

Typical... American influence and interference proves once again money counts for nothing when it comes to producing quality entertainment. One word for them... and it ends in anker's

I hear Douglas Adams is spinning faster than a pulsar!