3/10

Yes, I have cassette tapes of the original Australian ABC radio broadcasts from 1979 (almost unplayable now), the paperbacks, the radio scripts book, the three LP records, the mp3 episode collection and a signed hardcover collection. From this you might guess that I'm a fan of HHGTTG. I even attended a lecture at the Great Australian Science show in 2000 where Douglas Adams revealed that a modern high-tech version of the movie was being planned, and how difficult it was for him and his friends to "invent" futuristic technology for use in the film. It seemed that everything they planned (that wasn't totally absurd) was either already invented or under construction.

Five years later I discover that the movie is finally about to be released and I'm filled with a mix of nervousness, anxiety and eagerness. Big budget movies have stunk on ice for the last 10 years (especially in the SF and fantasy genre), so I'm worried that the new HHGTTG movie will suffer from the same malady. Then I hear that the movie has not been "sold out" to a big US company and it will therefore retain the British influence that donated the original quirky humour. Most of the major actors will be British. Thank heavens!

The short trailers look good. The guy from The Office plays Arthur Dent and has a wonderfully appropriate stunned look on his face. Marvin looks weird but technically impressive, and he's voiced by the charismatic Alan Rickman. Ford prefect is a black guy?!? This reeks of political correctness (a modern movie plague), which worries me a bit, but overall it's looking pretty good.

The big day arrives and we use some Christmas gift tickets to see HHGTTG 2005 in Gold Class luxury. As an aside: I find that the menu and drinks list has changed. A bottle of chardonnay is now a mind-bogglingly absurd $42, so the next day I compose a letter of complaint to Village Cinemas. Gold Class tickets are now $35 each, which in combination with the drinks prices mean that it is unlikely we will ever visit Gold Class again. A burst of glorious Gold Class cinema advertising is plastered over free-to-air TV for the next few weeks, and I take this as a clue that their attendance numbers are falling. But anyway, back to the movie...

The opening movie theme is moronic, and it has dancing dolphins (not looking good in the first 2 minutes). So, I watch the book literally unfold on screen for 40 minutes or so and I sit there stone faced. Why don't I laugh? Most of the most subtle and memorable jokes have been removed. I feel like I'm having my favourite jokes partially regurgitated back at me by some excited person with a stutter. The character of Zaphod is overacting insanely and it's just not funny. Stephen Fry is a great narrator, but it all seems a bit flat.

Suddenly the plot mutates and Trillian is arrested by Vogons, they run into some slapping spades, Arthur waits in a queue, Malkovich babbles about something pointless, Trillian is almost dropped into the Bugblatter Beast (in an incongruous cameo role), some mice appear somewhere, the whale and petunias drop and then some other stuff I can't remember happens and finally they finish-up on the factory floor of Magrathea.

By now I realise that this is no Lord of The Rings, where my imagination was gloriously realised on the screen. I love HHGTTG just as much as Rings, but the technology has not made it any better. Something has gone wrong, but I can't put my finger on it. To this day I'm still not exactly sure why HHGTTG did not work for me, but I think it was something to do with changing the plot (which Adams apparently planned), Zaphod's overacting and the removal of many of the more intellectual pseudo-scientific jokes.

I actually sat up in my seat when Bill Nighy arrived, playing a gob-smackingly brilliant Slartibartfast, easily up there with Richard Vernon from the original radio play and TV show. I would pay a half ticket price again just to watch the final 10 minutes with a distracted and disaffected Bill narrating as he tours Earth II. Only Bill exhibited real comic timing in the movie. Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) was quite good, but it seemed like something was holding her back

Then everyone comes back to life, the Earth is magically reconstituted and our crew suddenly fly-off to the sequel in a restaurant (if it gets funded). In the week after I saw the movie I played the original radio play episodes again while I was working, and I actually laughed aloud many times. I can only remember the radio play. Sadly, this movie did not work, and I don't want to see any sequels.

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