The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | | Cast : | Warwick Davis, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman (II) | | Director : | Garth Jennings | | Studio : | Buena Vista Home Video | | Format : | | | Released Date : | April 29, 2005 | | DVD Released Date : | September 13, 2005 | | Language : | | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 31, 2005 | | Summary | I was entertained | Content
 | This movie is a long way in the making. A film adaptation like this can never live up to a hardcore fan's impossible standards. There are things I would've changed, but it's not my movie. I love the books and I went into the movie with no expectations. It was an entertaining realization of Adams book, and different, since he is the one responsible for this particular screenplay.
Watch it with care, for you may cringe at some changes and strange choices made by the corporate Hollywood system (but what else is new). Just be glad it got made and got more people interested in checking out the actual novels. As I read most of these other reviews, I began to question whether or not these people actually remember the Hitchhiker's Guide (since a lot of them claimed to be HUGE fans that haven't touched the books in 15 years hmm).
Just watch it for yourself and decide. Don't let these so called "hardcore fans" deter you from this film, or this book, or this idea. Douglas Adams was a fairly original author and a funny writer. Take all reviews of this movie with a grain of salt, or a towel, because REMEMBER: These reviews were written by humans and as we learned from Adams himself, Humans are only the third most intelligent species on Earth, aside from Dolphins and, above all, mice. So they can be pretty delusional.
If you know where your towel is, hate most poetry, and believe that a Babbelfish proves and disproves the existence of God, then this film will be a nice attempt at bringing a complex idea to theatrical dramatization. It is what it is. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 29, 2005 | | Summary | Not for the true fans . . . | Content
| To give a fair rating for this film, I've watched it through three times. That's because some films leave the wrong impression on first viewing, particularly if you're distracted by constantly trying to relate the content in the film to the book.
Anyway, after seeing it three times, I get the feeling (and this is only my own opinion), that true original fans of the book, and even the UK TV series, will not like it very much. Personally, it was like seeing your best friend going through a botched face lift. You know it's your friend under there, but boy is it hard to look at! I found some parts of the film to be a fresh angle, but at times found that scenes went on far too long for what they had to offer.
If, however, you've never experienced any of Douglas Adams's work, you may enjoy the film without the prejudice a true fan may bring with them, but you may also hate it if you don't like the kind of humour the film puts forward.
The trouble is I believe, is Americans seem to have the magic touch of adapting original British work, and promptly have it fall flat on it's face. Don't get me wrong - the US has given us some of the best comedy ever. Frasier and Cheers to name but two, are without doubt works of comedy art, in the way that only the Americans can do that kind of comedy, but in the US, they seem to insist on bastardising British comedy to suit their taste.
Look what they did to Red Dwarf and The Office. Completely squeezed out all the elements that made them so popular in the first place. The same, I feel, has happened to the HGTTG. The reason some Americans liked the original UK TV series (played on PBS etc, is due to the fact that it WAS low budget, and the actors DIDN'T take themselves too seriously - all that just added to it's unusual charm.
All the aforementioned is lost however in this film, and we're left with a polished, high budget release with actors who simply lack the likeability of the original cast. You tend not to care what happens to these characters, and that's a bad sign for any movie.
If you've already seen the movie and hated it, and you've not seen Douglas's work before, do yourself a favour and get the UK TV series on DVD.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
42
. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 25, 2005 | | Summary | Forget what you know. | Content
| For a Hitchhiker's Guide fanatic (like myself) this movie caused many nightmares before it came out. "How will it be?" "Will they ruin the book?" Finally, I decided to go in to watching the movie by conveniently forgetting everything I know about The Guide. And you know what? I thought it was brilliant. A great mix of movie magic with British humor. If you're going to see this movie, don't expect to see a perfect book-to-movie setup, because you will be sorely dissapointed.
Oh, and don't forget your towel. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 24, 2005 | | Summary | Wait for the 2-disc edition! | Content
| Once again Hollywood follows the trend of rushing out the DVD of a summer movie, only to release a "deluxe" edition right before Christmas. I can't tell you how excited I was to buy this movie until I heard that the UK is getting a deluxe 2-disc version (which looks like a copy of the Guide itself), and the US will have to wait another 3 months. Keep in mind, I LOVE this movie, it just breaks my heart that such a great movie is getting such a shoddy release. Not everyone will care.. some people just want the movie and don't care about extras, but some of us do. It's become routine that a movie comes out early summer, is released sometime in September, and released again (only better) in late November. They've done it with Hellboy, they're doing it with Sin City, and now they're doing it with this. I urge you to wait for the special edition so maybe Hollywood will stop trying to make us buy the same movie twice. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 24, 2005 | | Summary | kinda dated time bandits meets ho ho | Content
| dudes, this movie was expensive, and the special effect s were great, but, it wa s kinda fluffy, and innocent, and youcould tell it was written long time ago, before star wars came out -- that movie changedeverything a bout space travel and sh**. i'd see this movie again, cause quite fra nkly i donn't remember tooo much a about it. i rembmeer it was, like, good, but there was somethin missin. its like a ho ho. and then it all cums back together at the end, like time bandits, like back to normal again, full circle and sh**, yeah... and then there's "save the universe" stuff happnin for the other 90 minnutes... i gotta go to beddd.... i''m out. j.. |
|
