The family trundled down to the local moving picture show this afternoon, after a curriculum committee meeting, to watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I enjoyed it greatly — it’s light without being lite, and my main complaint was that I would gladly have stayed for a double feature with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which I hope is coming soon.
That’s partly because our house is a serious branch office of the Zooey Deschanel fan club, ever since Big Trouble. Margaret was delighted to see her as Trillian, and I second the motion.
The new plot elements worked moderately well; they skewed a little heavily toward Hollywood for my taste, but Douglas Adams skewed toward Hollywood still remains delightful and ingenious. They handled Zaphod’s extra body parts very well; the Vogons were appropriately repulsive; I love Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast, even though I wish he’d paced the name-revelation dialogue a little differently. Mos Def and Martin Freeman did very well, and I toast Sam Rockwell for moving from Guy Fleegman in Galaxy Quest to President of the Universe here.
Adams’s anti-religious tic, though, just gets wearisome for some of us against whom his barbs are directed. Perhaps I’m too touchy, perhaps I should find my life as risible as he would have, but I see in these scenes less of Adams’s outlandish wit and more predictable japery.
So, is Restaurant in production yet?
I agree about the movie, although Zaphod drove me nuts (he sounded to much like W). The anti-religious tic always seemed poorly thought through to me as well, but i’ve never been able to figure this [http://tinyurl.com/asyr6] out.
My favorite sci-fi author, R. A. Heinlein, also features a recurring anti-(organized)religion commentary. What disappoints is that, on this theme, he almost wholly lacks the imagination and logical rigor that characterize his work as a whole. I think it’s a “bitten as a child” thing.