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It's been more than a week since I saw the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie, and I've only just figured out my reaction to it. I can't honestly say I loved or hated, liked or disliked the movie--a state of affairs that makes writing a movie review kind of awkward. Despite that fact, I'm going to write my own review.

Despite the wildly conflicting reviews, I really wanted to like the Hitchhiker movie. That shouldn't have been hard, since there was a lot to like.

First, the visual presentation is almost perfectly in keeping with the spirit (if not always the exact details) of the books. The Vogons, and their solid, antique-looking technology, were particularly good. You could really believe that you were observing denizens of a viciously bureaucratic culture. The interior of the Heart of Gold, the pub in Guildford where Ford and Arthur have their final (?) pints on Earth, the Vogon ship, the factory floor where Slartibartfast's and his colleagues manufacture planets--all perfect, all perfectly evocative of the books. I do have a few minor quibbles about the visuals: The Heart of Gold shouldn't look like a white eyeball, and Marvin shouldn't look like a dwarf Stormtrooper with a mutant golf ball for a head. Otherwise, though, the visuals really worked for me.

The special effects, though not extensive, were equally fine. I loved the scene where Ford and Arthur first find themselves on the Heart of Gold, transmogrified into couches. The scene where the bowl of petunias and the whale materialize and plummet to Earth was faithfully rendered. In fact, the peculiar ... manifestations that occurred whenever the Heart of Gold powered up the Improbability Drive were, in general, very good.

And to my surprise the casting was also good. Alan Rickman was inevitable, and perfect, as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, and Helen Mirren surprisingly effective as the voice of Deep Thought. Even the people you expected to be casting mistakes did a great job. I liked Mos Def as Ford Prefect and Zooey Deschamel as Trillian, and the proliferation of American accents just didn't bother me, because the overall personality tone of each character was right. My only serious reservation was about the guy who played Zaphod Beeblebrox, and I even grew to like him in the role by the end of the movie.

So, you may ask, what the hang is my problem?

It's not that the scriptwriters left stuff out. I figured they'd have to do that--there was just too much potential material there in the first place.

It's not even that the scriptwriters added things, or changed things--I expected that too, for the same reason. It isn't possible to transmit everything in a typical novel onto the silver screen, and when you take stuff out you have to make substitutions just to preserve the narrative flow and tell at least a semicoherent story.

No, what bothered me most is that a lot of the stuff that they added or changed was stupid and/or pathetically contrived to provide an excuse for dramatic scenes, or to make sure that Arthur and Trillian would be a happily-ever-after couple by the end of the movie. For instance, they took pains to craft a special subplot that would give Arthur a chance to rescue Trillian using the few skills he had that were relevant in a pan-galactic context. (Though I admit that this rescue had some plausibility; Arthur, being an Englishman, would naturally "know how to queue!"). The desert plain with the special shovels that would rise up and swat people in the face every time they had an idea was tedious after the first few seconds, if not sooner, and much more like Monty Python than Adams. And, for heaven's sake, why on Earth did the super-intelligent programmers from Planet whatever (you know, the ones disguised as mice) give Arthur a dose of the same stuff that knocked out his friends so that they could take his brain in peace, instead of giving him a chance to argue with them? And why would supposedly super-intelligent beings consider using a fake answer to the Secret of the Universe because it was plausible enough to get them glory and fame? Worst of all; the lemon juicer helmet intended to help Zaphod focus with the unstolen portion of his brain. Ow. Please. Please. Make it stop....

To my surprise, most of my friends liked the movie, even thought it was funny in spots. I'm not talking about mundane friends, either; I'm talking about fannish friends who are as familiar, or even more familiar, with the books and the various other video productions based upon them than I am. This fact has puzzled me for over a week, but I think I've figured it out now, and it's summarized in the title of this little rant.

Many reviewers have complained that the movie is insufficiently funny, but they don't mean by it quite the same thing that I do. They mostly mean "they didn't put in most of the good lines (or scenes or whatevers) from the books!" However, that's not what caused my problem with the movie. Because, in fact, the scriptwriters (one of whom happened to have been Adams, before his death) *did* put in a lot of the jokes and scenes from the book. It didn't help, or didn't help enough.

No, I think that the real problem is this. Humor, by its nature, requires surprise. On some level, for something to be funny, it has to be surprising. Moreover, it has to be a *good* surprise, not an unpleasant one. That's why it can be funny to see your boss's wife spill salad dressing all over her tacky but expensive silk pantsuit, but it isn't funny if you spill salad dressing on your best power tie right before a big job interview.

In other words, to mangle a famous quote slightly, what was good about the Hitchhiker's movie was not surprising (i.e., the visuals were perfect, and thus were what we all expected if we'd read the books) and what was surprising about the Hitchhiker's movie was not good (because it required tons of stupid plot contrivances that I would have preferred the characters not have to get mixed up in). Think about it. Nothing surprises Marvin, because he's so intelligent he predicts most events that happen, and what he doesn't predict is really unpleasant stuff. Hence, Marvin's total absence of a sense of humor.

Because I perceived there as being very few good surprises in the movie, I didn't find it funny, and without humor the Hitchhiker's material in general becomes ... rather pointless. Hence, I spent most of the movie alternately admiring the stuff that accurately depicted the books, and wincing at the plot developments imported primarily to provide the movie with the obligatory happy ending.

Now, I have been accused of having no sense of humor myself, and of overanalyzing things. You may well disagree with me about the lack of funny or the reason for whatever level of funny you found. Me, I'm just calling it as I see it.

One more thing. I wanna Point of View gun. And I also want a nifty lightsaber knife that toasts the bread while it slices it. :-)