I’m pleased to be writing from my parent’s house in sunny Cleethorpes. We finished our five weeks in Düsseldorf last night and flew home this morning for a well deserved break. Luckily, my Dad was kind enough as to come and pick me up from Manchester Airport and bring me back here to collect my car which they’ve been watching for me while I’ve been away. Nice one Dad!!!
I decided to stay here tonight since I really couldn’t be bothered to travel any further today. This also afforded me the opportunity to make a start on some of the mundanities of life – new tyres for the car etc. That was the first of many jobs for this week.
I decided to go and check out the new cinema here in Cleethorpes this evening. They’ve been talking about building one here for years and they finally, recently, finished it! It’s not a bad place with clean, modern facilities. Unfortunately, I made the mistaken decision of going to watch the new movie adaptation of The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised with how I felt about this film. This has been one of my favourite books since childhood and Douglas Adams’ writing style is so distinctive that the translation from radio to book to big screen was never going to be without it’s problems. I suspect that that’s why it took so long to finally make the film. I can remember them talking about doing a movie at least 15 years ago!! That said, I was really disappointed with how it turned out.
From such an elegantly balanced book, I was upset to see such a crass Americanisation of this story. I think that much re-writing and editing of the Screenplay must have taken place after the untimely death of Douglas Adams. While there were obvious quotes from the original book/radio show, much of the sheer wit of the writing has been lost in this adaptation. That, coupled with some unnecessary extra scenes at tangents to the plot and some dreadful character portrayals rendered parts of the film unwatchable. I didn’t mind Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) or Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) but Ford Prefect and Zaphod, played by Mos Def and Sam Rockwell respectively, were simply loathsome.
I’m not going to go on any further, to do so would give away too much of the plot for those who may not yet have seen this film. I hope that anyone who sees it without prior knowledge of the books might be encouraged to discover the real work of Douglas Adams. Anybody, like me, who is already a fan, will probably be as disappointed as I was.
Still, who cares about that – few days at home and then back to New York for a couple of weeks. I also heard a rumour that there’s a new Star Wars film coming out while I’m there. Shame….