Funk Babblings

Tonight we finally saw the film I've waited 20 years for.

First, the previews were almost all wrong. All but Revenge of the Sith seem aimed directly at kids, rather than at the SF geeks going to this movie. And no Serenity trailer. The Chicken Little trailer (not the one Apple has) gets cleverness points for parodying the original HHGG teaser.

Anyway, the movie.... I was pleased that it started strong (I annoyed nontacitare by reciting some of the lines as they were said), and was even willing to forgive the cutting short of a few jokes and the occasional English-to-American translation. (It's zed and bypass, not zee and expressway!) I wanted to burst into applause when the first banjo notes of "Journey of the Sorcerer" came along. But it kinda went downhill after that, though I still thought it was fun. The main problem for me was pacing - most of the film felt rushed, while the Vogsphere segment (and pretty much all the Vogon stuff) dragged.

Arthur and Ford worked, though Ford was inexplicably huggy early on. Arthur was too obsessed with Trillian from the start, and Trillian wasn't quite right, though not quite wrong either. I think part of Trillian's problem has always been Adams though; he had trouble getting her believable and consistent from the start.

While Alan Rickman was pretty good as Marvin, there were certain lines that just didn't sound right done by anyone but Stephen Moore.

I liked John Malkovich as Humma Kuvula, but the stuff about election politics didn't really seem to fit. Which brings us to Zaphod....
Zaphod was just plain annoying, not at all the Zaphod I know. But then I realized that he was a George W Bush parody, which at least gave me some reference if not enjoyment of the character. (Anyone else see it, or is it just me?)

Then we got the G'gugvant/Vl'hurg/dog scene alongside the credits at the end (with a justifiably different trigger phrase from Arthur)... and typically, they cut out two lines at the end of it for no readily apparent reason. sigh.

This is the kind of film I'll watch multiple times to catch all the in-jokes and background details. It's just disappointing that those are all that make it worth watching again. On the other hand, I think I enjoyed it a lot more than nontacitare did.