The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
At long last, the funniest book ever written is coming to a theatre near you.
I can't believe they made a movie out of it!
Starring Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Marvin the Paranoid Android.
I can't believe they made a movie out of it!
Starring Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Comments
I am a HUGE fan of this book, but the movie sucked. I mean REALLY REALLY sucked. I mean SERIOUSLY sucked.
No kidding. It sucked.
When I was in junior high school I must have read this book at least a dozen times cover to cover. To the point where I would quote, verbatim, a relevant passage in any social situation.
This, surprisingly, did not make me very popular.
One of my favorite responses to anything was "This is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of" except that I would insert some other word instead of "safe" depending on the situation.
In grade 9, my math teacher, Charles Ledger, would make us do mental arithmetic before letting us out of class. He would stand at the front of the class and rapidly read off calculations ("9 times 8 minus 20 divided by 4 plus 12 take the square root plus 2 times 6") which we had to do in our head. Nobody leaves until someone shouts out the right answer. So one time he stumped everybody and the class was silent, so I just blurted out, "42!" and by fluke I was right and he was so shocked that anybody got that one and then he didn't believe me when I said it was just a guess.
I have recited Vogon poetry to my son Ryan. Really. Figuring he doesn't know what I'm saying anyway, and he giggles at the sound of "frettled gruntbuggly."
Before I met my wife, I told some friends that I would promise my hand in marriage to the first woman to use the word "bypass" in an everyday sentence. I said this not entirely not unjokingly.
I have attempted to popularize the use of the adjective "hoopy"; sadly, to no avail.
And to this day not a week goes by at work where I don't say "OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?" Mysteriously, this does not endear me to my colleagues.
All of this from one book. So I ask you, how can any movie that isn't Pulp Fiction compete with all that?
(I guess you had to see it on the big screen. The effects were okay.)
I really had a hard time understanding why Douglas Adams' family approved of the script. Maybe it was meant as his final joke on the world.
Oddly, it doesn't come across the same in the book. No English accents. ;-)