so last night, after finishing all the deadwood season 2 episodes that HOD had to offer me, i decided to watch the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy which has been sitting at home for well over a month (thank you netflix for not charging me! you’re the bestest.) i read the book a while back and thought it very cheeky and british. dry and very funny in the same way that absolutely fabulous is without all the drinking and drugs. i was a little skeptical that this movie could be pulled off since a lot of the narrative is told third-hand but they did a great job. i was quite pleased.
martin freeman, as arthur dent, was wholly believeable. he took every strange thing about the galaxy in stride only losing his marbles once or twice. i like zooey deschanel. she had great range and some very nice eyes. sam rockwell was hilarious as zaphod beeblebrox. mos def, great, and alan rickman as the voice of marvin the paranoid android suitably depressed.
what i really want to mention is this really great sequence in the middle of the movie when, aboard a spaceship that zaphod has stolen, this team of strange and alien explorers decides to kick in the infinite improbability drive in order to zoom across the galaxy. the principle of the infinite improbability drive is:
..that as its drive reaches infinite improbability, the ship passes simultaneously through every point in the universe. it is then possible to decide at which point you actually want to be at when improbability levels decrease. unfortunately human beings are badly accustomed to not traveling at normality (probability 1:1), and can be fairly distressed by events around them whilst the improbability drive is working: losing limbs, turning into penguins, planets spontaneously becoming fruitcakes, nuclear missiles metamorphosing into sperm whales and bowls of petunias, and so forth.
.. so they kick in the drive and the spaceship becomes a giant ball of yarn with needles sticking out of it! all of the inside of the ship, including the people, become knitted characters and arthur gets all naseous and throws up rainbow colored red heart yarn! it’s the most fantastic thing i had ever seen! i laughed for a good ten minutes and replayed it over and over. you have to see it for yourself.
Katie
I loved the movie (and the book!) and nearly fell out of my seat when I first saw the improbable yarn conversion! And I was with non-knitters, so they didn’t fully “get it.” But I actually DID drop my knitting bag laughing and that’s how I lost my little darning needle set.
Of course, the andriod was my favorite part of the movie.
Oct 28, 2005 @ 12:18 PM
Hammy
Welcome to the delights of British humour. We Aussies have had it for years. I loved the show so much that I have the videos and that doesn’t happen too often. Haven’t seen the movie yet. I have read all five books in the “increasingly inaccurately named trilogy” that is Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy.
Oct 28, 2005 @ 6:44 PM
Sarah
Oh, how I lerv Hitchhiker’s Guide…. I thought the movie was great – totally made for the HHGTTG fans and it increased my already sizeable crush on Mos Def.
I think my favorite part was how they showed the Vogons sitting on their stag chairs… you wouldn’t even notice it if you hadn’t read the books!
Oct 29, 2005 @ 6:53 PM
mattymcg
Without wanting to be the voice of dissent, I didn’t think the movie was that great. Granted, I haven’t read the book so I may have got more out of it if I had. I normally like British humour, and there were a couple of moments where I chuckled. But for most of the movie I raised my eyebrows in a “that’s interesting” kind of way without really ‘getting’ it…
Nov 02, 2005 @ 7:22 AM