Well - saw it with the boy today. First off: it kept the attention of a six-year old. ;^)
Lots of great slap-stick, lots of over-the-top visuals and one-liners, lots of silly faces - it really is a more than decent family movie. (Apparently the theater thought so as well - all of the previews were for kid-flicks. Of course that may have just been because we were at a matinee.) He laughed hysterically at the "idea slappers" on Vogosphere (that's the part he told everybody else about) and truly giggled at some of the other visual gags (like the airlock opening on the Vogon ship). Personally I liked it a lot - the casting for Aurther was PERFECT (if you've not seen the original, British, "The Office" GET IT - he was better in that). His little "wake up" routine was just sublime. I did think that several things were overlooked - I could have done without the Dolphin musical number in exchange for the guide entry on towels which was inexplicably left out. They emphasized the towels, but not at all clearly or enough. As others noted the treatment of Zaphod's second head was... weird. But I can understand that they didn't want every single shot in the movie to be an effects shot (which would have been the case if his head were as described in the book). The industrial design was nothing like described in the book - but it worked. Marvin was GREAT (casting Alan Rickman's voice was a friggin' stroke of brilliance). "Deep Thought" looked like something directly out of "Exploding Dog" and it was brilliant. The "Heart of Gold" looked great even tho' it held no resemblance to a running shoe. Henson's Creature Shop outdid themselves on the Vogons: there's something so much more organic, so much more natural about having the creatures on the set for the actors to interact with. The recent achievements in CGI have been stunning - but there's always something ever so slightly "off". That doesn't happen with animatronics. Of course the problem with animatronics is the lack of realistic or a full range of motion - the Vogons displayed a bit of this, but over all they looked and worked flawlessly. The fleshy lips smacking, the nostrils flaring, the eyeballs focusing - just flawless. The story was "tidied up" for the movie: the closed-ended love story with everybody partnering off at the end, the revival of Earth, the heroics of Marvin. I'm not thrilled with that but it wasn't unexpected. Adams himself was more than willing to fiddle with the story to adapt it to the expectations of different mediums, this was no different. My only real complaint was that some of the bits just went so very, very long. The trip through the "factory" was interesting but just kept on going. The Dolphins song was cute for the first 20 seconds but continued for four minutes. All told I just think they could have cut some of that down and gotten more of the meaty-bits in there. Also, as a last note, I really hope they go completely over the top for the DVD release. ;^) Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Discover CFTicket - The leading ColdFusion Help Desk and Trouble Ticket application http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=48 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:156016 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
