Hope you brought your towel

The verdict: Overwhelmingly awesome. Completely hilarious, faithful, original and well-translated. Brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant.

If you've just joined us, I'm talking about the new Hitchhiker's Guide film. I just went to see it tonight (release night) with a large group of my good friends from uni.

Also, on the way to uni this morning, checked the mailbox and GOT MY 3 TOWELS! Woot. Kept one for myself (heh) and had a raffle on the other two. Once again, very sorry to everyone who missed out. Two of us hoopy froods wore our towels through the whole film. And gee, if we looked silly going in, it was EVERYONE ELSE IN THE THEATRE who looked silly going out. Tsk tsk, such strags, to go see the Hitchhiker's film and not know where their towels were!

Just.... too brilliant. I am not going to give any spoilers here because I want everyone to see it for themselves. I want to say that, at least from my point of view, the horrid Magrathea review was completely unfounded. I don't know, perhaps they we're watching the outtake reel.

Here's a quick non-spoily review.

• About 50% of the film was based on the book. 50% was brand new. Most of the new stuff was written by Douglas. But all of it was good.


• The story blended well; new story elements were cohesive and the changes were, I believe, necessary to ensure it worked as a film.


• All the characters are absolutely lovable, even Marvin whom I've never been a big fan of in the books.


• Yes, a lot of content from the books is missing. Boo hoo. It simply isn't possible to fit it all in. Most of the good stuff is there, including a number of excerpts from the Guide, hilariously illustrated and narrated by Stephen Fry.


• Although, I was a bit O_O'd at the start, when the whole bit in Arthur's house up to when they left for the pub (the entire first chapter) was condensed into about 3 minutes. Although it slowed down after that, you could almost hear the pen scratching as they crossed out all the unnecessary lines and kept only the best. It was very tight, but very funny.


• Personally, I really enjoyed seeing changes. It would have been boring to see the story told out with actors. At certain points they decided to "speed up" parts of the book by having them happen in a totally fresh way, which was, really quite refreshing.


• American accents are a little awkward at first, but you get used to them very quickly and hardly realise. In fact, there's even a few lines in the film which try to account for Ford's american accent! ;)


• DON'T PANIC! The meaning of life is still 42! (I heard on the movie show that another director they had lined up, Ivan Reitner, wasn't too keen on that idea!! Good god).

And now for a little spoiler
They have very definitely gone out of their way to set up a sequel. There hasn't been much talk about this before, but the way they did it, not only did they keep in all of Adams' references to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", but they actually added totally new plot elements which are hanging over... AWESOME!

So that about wraps it up. I don't feel too excited right now, but three hours ago I was nearly wetting myself... this is the best film I've ever seen!!!

As always, the biggest tragedy of all was the one man who worked the hardest and deserved to see it most never will. We miss you, Douglas.

"...Brockian Ultra-Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away)"
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy