The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Floro's Surprisingly Late To The Party - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...the book?

I know what you're likely thinking. "Floro, you had to have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You're a HUGE nerd! You were one of those kids that had memorized Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 10th grade. You obviously read this book, enjoyed it, and have been quoting it for more than a decade. I know you have not commited such blasphemy!"

You would be wrong.

"Floro! Then you must have read the book before you saw the movie starring Martin "The Watson-Hobbit" Freeman, Mos Def, and Zooey Deschanel before she could be hipster cool. It would be completely insane for someone of your librarianistic upbringing to watch such a literary standard before actually reading it. It would be almost as unbelievable as that word you I just made up. For crying out loud, your writing seems to be influenced by it at times!"

You would still be wrong.

By pure coincidence, I finished the book just this past weekend, in the year 2013, shortly before Douglas Adams' birthday of March 11. I was not aware of the relevance, and can only assume that some cosmic force willed this to happen in some relation to the number 42. I have the "ultimate" collection on my Nook which has all 5 of Adams' books in his trilogy. I am thoroughly enjoying it and I am disappointed in the rest of the world for not Clockwork-Oranging me into reading it earlier. But I forgive you, rest of the world. You didn't know.

The book, just The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, surprised me with how short it was. I was not at all surprised at how quickly the voice in my head started reading the book as Eric Idle reading the news.

And he is this young while it happens

Which is extremely odd considering my first "reading" was done with the perfectly cast narration of Stephen Fry during the 2005 movie.

He shouldn't be this surprised. He's quite good.

Some brief research tells me that Mr. Fry was one of the hardest people to cast, and that Adams was very particular about who played the book, and who played Arthur Dent. Credit to Marcia Ross for picking "Elementary Dr. Bilbo" Martin Freeman. 

I think now would be an excellent time to point out that the movie was written primarily by Adams, puppeteered (not CGI'd) by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and they pulled the obvious choice for Marvin the Paranoid Android in the incomparable Alan Rickman.

So while I'm substantially late to the party on the book, I discovered I was right on time for the movie, and it's a great ride. I keep writing about the casting, and that's purely because it's phenomenal. Between that and the cult classic writing, you have a solid movie based off of a book. I also retroactively appreciate that this bookmovie had the author involved in the writing, if for nothing else, it showed me that I never need to read a single word of the Twilight Series after having seen all 5 of the "movies".

 Even with the sarcastiquotes, I still net positive points with my wife with this picture.

I'm not going to go so far to say that the movie deserves the same cult following as the rest of The Guide's world. It doesn't. The additional character development scenes and detours, while fun, are slow and don't make a ton of difference in the end. While I future liked it when I was actually reading the book, we probably could've done without. The movie just sort of trails off leaving you with that kind of "huh. time to leave now" feeling. There's a lot to appreciate about Adams' zany universe and the way it is presented on screen. The ensemble each own their characters, save for maybe Zooey, but it's hard to tell with that one. If you haven't already, watch the movie. If you haven't also already, read the book. You can do it in either order, just so long as you don't panic.