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Perhaps the sound was set too low in the theater, but this just didn't totally do it for me. Nor most of the audience at my screening, I gathered. Well, except maybe the dreadlocked dude who was sitting next to me and got really sad before the movie when his girlfriend declared she didn't like the slurpee he bought because it was "too carbonated." Still, I'm giving it a 3.5/5 - which is decent - so you can rest assured that if you read on you won't be subjected to a total Phanboy wank-off. Straight off the theme/feeling/whatever emerged slightly off-center, like it was abrupt and zany but not actually clever enough to define itself as absurd (absurdity is the goal when handling a story centered around a guidebook to hitchhiking across the galaxy or universe). I didn't understand the reference to the former TV version (or whatever it was), and nor do I care now to figure it out. It just wasn't interesting. Dolphins - second most intelligent creature on earth, ahead of humans - gotcha. But this montage isn't obvious enough about whether we should be seriously wondering if it should have been apparent to us that the dolphins knew something we didn't the entire time they wiled away their hornballed lives performing acrobatic stunts for mildly amused, grape-juice swilling, closet-full-of-novelty-hats parents hoping to engender a sense of anthropomorphic amusement with a strong twinge of hedonistic authority unto their clap-your-hands-when-you're-having-fun-NO-clap-after-the-trick-has-been-done kids. When watching movies, I tend to sometimes imagine how I would alter a cut, or edit something slightly differently, or get rid of the awkwardness that arises from off-timed interactions (the book (sorry) is a comedic masterpiece in terms of dialogue exchanges). For instance, in this first scene - with the dolphins, I'm still talking about that, and no there's no dialogue in it, so it's kind of weird that I segued it with that last sentence - I would have made the dolphin that shot up into the air just as the narrator said "performing a double-whatever while whistling the starbangled banner" actually flip around in the air (as in, a visual example of exactly what the guy is describing) with a small track playing a section from the national anthem. loving exclamation point. Make the dolphin flip, damnit. Superior my butt. How funny would it be to see a wildly flipping, whistling dolphin? Because it sure sounds funny when the narrator describes it. Alas, we'll never know. Anyway, I thought that was weak, and it basically established a course for the rest of the movie. A course where comedic potential was not quite met due to awkward timing, sub-par performances, hosed up pacing, weak dialogue, too low sound in the theater, and much much more! I mean, I was definitely still open to refreshing my opinion after the opening scene (I'm not that lame), but I was additionally saddened when, rather than convince the construction workers with an absurd string of arguments to stay their tractors, Ford just wheeled in a bunch of beer and diverted their attention for a few minutes. Performances: Zooey Deschanel works well as an actor in such roles as the super-hick cashier with an attitude from The Good Girl. In that role, she doesn't need to extend beyond dead-panned non-acting and actually express emotion. We aren't forced to care about her as a character. It's when she attempts to exert effort that we come to realize she really can't act. She's pretty and all, but she's a loving stoner. Slartibartfast - meh. I'm sure I should care about who this guy is in real life, and therefore appreciate his worth based purely on that. But I don't and I can't. It seemed to me like he was just thrown into this role, spending about two seconds looking up "non-chalant" in the dictionary before settling into it. Kind of like how I spent about two seconds being filled with awe at the "production floor" scene, before they miserably failed to follow-up on the full scope of what we were supposed to be viewing. Basically they could have shown just one shot of Earth Mark II with them all teensy on their pod in the foreground and I would have been like OH HELL YES! Furthermore, if they went beyond that (beyond what they didn't even show in the first place) and bothered to show one of the walls that most likely extends a million miles without seeming to curve in at all, my jaw would have dropped so open that no amount of popcorn from a size Medium bag would be able to fill it. Arthur Dent - I thought he was a little flat. I guess it makes sense - the discombobulation and stuff - so I won't delve too deeply into criticism. I just wasn't really struck by the guy. If we were dating, I'd probably have trouble looking him the eyes. And then I'd dump him. Zaphod Beeblebrox - I'm in the school of Yes Zaphod/Sam. The whole Creed look is on it's own very funny - with the sandy blonde long hair, and the prominently darker and denser hair on his eyebrows and beard. Although his second head wasn't very effective as a device. Space ship - Glossed Over Improbability Drive <On> - soccer ball, rose, ball of yarn - wow that's improbable. Imagine a spaceship turning into a rose! holy poo poo... Except when you consider that they're flying through the universe, so it's been established that there's life and structure beyond boring earth. Why doesn't the Heart of Gold turn into a reverse-thrust hairdryer from Salonia 5? Because that would be too absurd - people would then start to think that maybe the tenuous sequence of events paraded as a plot is not just an effect of wacky writing, but is also an effect of bad, careless direction. Marvin - I wish he had a mouth. Anyway, besides it being dumbed down and sloppy and stuff, I enjoyed it. I do worry that people who don't already know the plot and themes will be confused by the shoddy structure and how they basically stop referencing the Guide halfway through the movie, but some of you seem to have enjoyed it regardless. So that's encouraging. Thanks for reading. I hope I at least made a point or two. 3.5/5 oops, sorry; I though the "thanks for all the fish" song and the dolphin intro were the "BBC cameo" that people were talking about. so my paragraph about that doesn't make as much sense as I intended. Master Cob fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 8, 2005 |
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Apr 30, 2005 19:38
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