Gone to America

Oooh, disappointing. It’s not bad, exactly, and you’d probably enjoy it more if you haven’t read the books, or heard the radio show, or seen the original BBC series. It’s a shame it didn’t translate well to yet another medium, but there you go. It does really pick up towards the end. Once they get to Magrathea the whole thing comes alive, thanks in no small part to Bill Nighy’s Slartibartfast and some really imaginative FX. Until then it’s really heartbreaking to watch favourite line after favourite fall flat and be thrown away.

But why? The basic content has undergone various mutations, additions and subtractions before this and basically survived. In fact most of the best stuff in the movie is the new stuff. And the quality of invention can’t be faulted – Zaphod is great, the Vogons are brilliant, I loved the Book itself etc. The only thing that hasn’t changed much from iteration to iteration before this is Arthur. He’s the constant in the bizarrely mutable universe. Not uninteresting, not unchanging, but still. Befuddled. Overwhelmed. Complaining.

I have nothing against Martin Freeman. I think he does a good job. I even think he’s well cast as this particular version of Arthur. I just don’t think this particular version of Arthur works. It’s easy to see how it happened: It’s a movie, so there should be a love story. Apparently Douglas Adams recognised this himself and had no problem with it. There’s only really one candidate for romantic interest: Trillian – Tricia MacMillan, a girl Arthur had completely failed to pick up at a party in an Islington flat. She had instead gone off with Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Aha! Triangle! Unfortunately, it does mean that we have to transform Arthur in order to make him be some real competition. Zaphod is, after all, the President of the Galaxy, and Arthur is pretty much stuck in his dressing gown for all time. Arthur has to become proactive and involved. One of the great things about Arthur was the way he deflected the demands of his bewildering existence with mordant wit.

“Arthur, what would you say if I told you I was actually an alien from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?
“I don’t know, Ford. Why, do you think it’s the kind of thing you’re likely to say?”*

His big problem with reality was that it wouldn’t just let him be. But not any more. This Arthur yearns. He wants. He wishes to control his destiny, to bend the Universe to his will. He doesn’t just react any more. For very good reasons – it’s a film, he’s the protagonist, he needs to change, fall in love. Unfortunately, this leaves a big hole. He still says many of his funny lines, but they don’t make so much sense from this new, proactive Arthur. The film is missing a basic perspective that all the previous iterations depended on, and it never makes it up. The basic oddness of everything is dulled when nobody is really noticing.

And without the sharpness of the wit the basic plot doesn’t seem that interesting. It all comes across as very contrived. Of course, we fans of the book know this is an entirely reasonable side effect of constant use of the infinite improbability drive, but the point is never clearly made in the film. Most unforgivably of all, it feels small.

There’s much to admire in this film, and it’s an honourable failure rather than an outright travesty, but I wish it had been an incredible success, and it isn’t. What shall I look forward to now? Batman Begins, certainly, but I think I’ll be holding out my main hopes for A Scanner Darkly. It’s another cherished book. I never learn.

*Quotes are approximate.