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IceFreak2000
Reviews
Shark Bait (2006)
Avoid
I took two of my kids to see this abomination the other day, and couldn't wait to get out of the cinema. It's just truly dire.
I wasn't expecting Pixar levels of animation, but I certainly wasn't prepared for quite how bad it turned out to be. And as for the story... well, at least it's being environmentally friendly by recycling every cliché it can lay its hands on.
The voice acting is more wooden than Keanu Reeves (now that's not something I ever expected to type!), but given the script it's not entirely surprising - it sounds like the 'talent' just phoned their parts in.
Awful, awful, awful.
Avoid.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
An appalling travesty
**** Contains possible spoilers **** I finally got around to watching The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy last night, and I can't even begin to convey my sense of disappointment with the entire film. This really is a mess, and adds a nasty blemish to the H2G2 series.
Let me first point out that I've been a huge fan of the Hitchhikers series, stemming all the way back to the original BBC Radio 4 broadcasts, through the hysterical books (stopping off for a quick detour through the TV series), back through the new books and the Dirk Maggs adapted radio series.
And now this. Oh dear.
First, the good points. Martin Freeman is an excellent Arthur Dent, and had he been given a script worthy of the character I get the feeling he would have been as good as Simon Jones' original. Stephen Fry is inspired casting as the voice of the book, and the animations for the book entries are sublime.
Bill Nighy makes a very reasonable Slartibartfast, but the normally wonderful Alan Rickman turns in a decidedly mediocre performance as Marvin.
And then it turns all brown coloured...
The film moves at such a pace that at no time are situations or characters allowed to develop into Douglas Adams' lunatic sense of absurdity. For example in the space of five minutes flat (or what feels like it), Ford and Arthur hitch a lift on the Vogon Constructor Fleet, Arthur gets his Babel Fish, the Vogon captain reads poetry to them and they get thrown off the ship. And that's the general feel of the film - stuff just happens, and there's no explanation as to why or how.
The other thing that will annoy long time fans is the huge volume of comic sequences that have just been inexplicably dropped or truncated to the point that all the humour has been surgically removed. An example occurs at the very beginning of the film where Arthur berates Mr. Prosser about the availability of the plans for the proposed bypass which will result in the demolition of his house. Whereas in the radio series, book, computer game etc. this segues into a hysterically absurdist description of the location of the plans the film stops with "...in the cellar" completely avoiding the joke and messing up the comic setup for the parallel with the Vogons and plans filed at Alpha Centuri.
Avoid.