A friend let me know, just before I went into the theater, that this was a tough movie to enjoy. Man, do I agree with him.
Now, don't take that the wrong way. The movie is good - far better than I had any right to expect. Funny, intelligent, well acted and weird as hell. So, how can it be hard to enjoy?
Well... simply put, familiarity with the source material. Douglas Adams is all about setting up extended jokes where all the fun is in the punchline. If you know all the punchlines, you're left with the extended set-up. It does spoil things quite a bit.
There are also some adaptation problems to be found. Artifacts from the movie's accidented journey from the page to the screen are everywhere; from a particularly glaring (but necessary) exposition scene on one of the major characters early in the movie, to plot holes and story threads that are lost in the shuffle (a conspiracy is never resolved, or even gone into... and the main story never quite makes sense). Strangely enough, these are really minor points. In a movie that features a infinite improbability drive which converts the characters into talking sofas or animated knitwork dolls, a cohesive story is not a priority.
And a great adaptation it is. It captures perfectly the haphazard structure of the books, complete with asides and digressions. The Guide entries bear a disturbing similarity to corporate infomercials, complete with hilarious flash-like animations (the babel fish entry is sublime) The actors are uniformly excellent; a bit jarring at first, but they quickly grow on you (a statement which describes the movie quite well, in fact). My main fears after learning that Buena Vista was behind the movie were fortunately unfounded. While kid-friendly, it's definitely not a kiddie flick; the action was not transposed to the US, nor did they hire only photogenic actors. And the movie sports a distinct personality: unlike the first two Harry Potter movies, where you could actually feel a faceless committee erasing any trace of personality the filmmaker might have tried to leave in his work (nevermind that the filmmaker in question, Chris Columbus, is a talentless hack), you can actually tell that someone put a lot of himself into the movie. That these things count as major triumphs speaks volumes of the sad state of Hollywood fare.
Anyhow, I was thoroughly impressed, even if I did not laugh as much as I would have had I not read the books, watched the miniseries, and played the text adventures... I think Douglas Adams would be proud.
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