HITCHHIKER'S, ONE MORE TIME

I saw "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" again last night (first time since I saw it in the theatre) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps even more than the first time.

I think the film is a great representation of a book that seems very difficult to bring to the screen. After all, it's hard enough turning a novel into a screenplay (novels tell their stories mostly through internal actions, thoughts and feelings, while film tells its stories through pictures - a huge difference but one many people don't really think about) without having to turn a novel about a book into a screenplay.

Some of the best parts of the book are the excerpts from the Guide, and I think they were handled flawlessly in the film. How? By making them visual, for one thing, which let them retain Douglas Adams' great words and get some extra jokes in to boot.

I also liked the characters more the second time around. Trillian seemed a little less distant, Zaphod actually started to charm me (maybe 'cause he's on a smaller screen, which I think makes a big difference in the perception of an annoying character - and after all, that's what Zaphod was and was meant to be), and Marvin and the Vogons were even better.

Again, when Douglas' name came up in the opening credits, and the dolphins stopped flipping through the air and the music saddened, I really felt it. The dolphins would have stopped dancing to give Douglas his due.

Seeing "for Douglas" at the end choked me up.

I read and re-read those books so many times as a kid/teenager that it's crazy. I really feel like Douglas Adams was a friend. He never let me down, and even now I discover little tidbits of meaning in the books. I think he was actually a great philosopher masquerading as a comic writer, or a bodhisatva (sp?) here to help us toward the light, and I felt the film captured the spirit of wild abandon and beautiful sadness that the books evoked. There's a true love of life in the movie - when they "commence the life cycle" at the end, it's downright joyous.

I miss Douglas Adams, although I never knew him. I miss the idea that he might write something that ends up on his website, or that he might just come out with the 6th book in the trilogy, or that he was somewhere in the world, looking around at the universe and having a good laugh.

I think he would have liked the movie, too.