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Reviews
Baywatch Nights (1995)
"The nights will never be the same again!"
Although there has been almost a decade since this show was aired it will always have a place in my heart as one of the most unintentionally (or not?) hilarious shows I've ever seen on TeeVee. At the time the Baywatch craze was at an all time high and the original show had scores of followers (Including my sister). yet, It just didn't seem to appeal to me as much. That changed with the spin-off. During it's first season it was a detective drama where the Big H and some chick cracked cases far away from the beach, the scantily clad women, idiot bathers and submerged nuclear bombs. It immediately hit home with my young naive soul, showing a tougher side of Mitch, being more "cool" and less "girly" in my opinion than the original was. Unfortunately it wasn't very unique and memorable so I don't remember much about that first season. That changed when the bizarre second season started. Tired of regular vanilla detective work (and low ratings from disinterested TV surfers) the Big H changed pace, switched chicks and started and upgraded from Private Eye to a Paranormal Eye. From there the episodes turned from the "Cliché detective show" to a more extreme "X-files on Crack", featuring several oddball episodes including "Hasselhoff and Paranormal-chick get chronologically cloned to save themselves from mutated Brazillian-body-snatching-snails" and "Frozen Viking who floats to LA and wreaks havoc when he thaws out" (this one gained extra publicity in my country as it incorporated a real incidence, the 1996 glacier-run of Vatnajökull glacier, to explain the origin of frozen Viking). At the time this show aired in Iceland it became one of my favourite shows, which is understandable since I was only about 11 at the time and had considerably lower standards than I have today. Of course, today I doubt this show, like many other TV failures of the same caliber, can still be found anywhere. But If I ever happened across a reasonably low-priced tape or DVD of the episodes I will probably buy it, if only to smirk at the outlandish plots and sub-par acting. And in the end, who doesn't love Mutant Brazillian Body-snatching Snails?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
A decent adaption of the concept.
I Can easily state that this is the only movie I have been absolutely obsessing over since Jurassic Park (I was nine at the time and had a fascination with dinosaurs. I'm not proud of it). Having read all of the books, listened to the radio shows (the old ones) and played the game I could expect that this movie wouldn't faithfully represent the definite source material, because there in no definite source material, something many so called fans have yet to realize. Regrettably, most "fans" have only read the book and may consider it the only true source, ignoring the fact that the book itself is an adaption of the popular radio play from the 80's, and differed immensely from it. The fact is that with every new incarnation (Radio shows, Books, TV shows, Plays, Text-based video game and movie) Douglas re-wrote the story entirely, dropping some ideas, expanding others and adding new ones. This Movie is no different. There are some things I would have liked to see that were dropped, just like there were things in the radio shows I would have liked to see in the books, but there are also several new things I liked, the POV-Gun being a good example.
OK. On to the actual review. I liked the actors. Freeman gives us a good view of the everyman Dent without getting overly exaggerated, Mos Def gives a whole new spin on Ford, portraying him as more of a hip person than the other versions (not really a bad thing though), Sam Rockwell gives an excellent portrayal of the egoistical half wit (literally!) President of the Galaxy: Zaphod Beebelbrox, though he might have been a wee bit more intelligent, Marvin is just like he's supposed to be like: depressed but funny. The character I liked most though was Trillian. In the other versions she was usually the least explored, being written out half way of the radio show and mostly seen as a secondary character in the books, she becomes much more important to the story in the movie, an importance which Zooey Deschanel manages to show in her portrayal. As for the other characters, I felt that most of them were satisfactorily portrayed, especially Humma Kavula, a new character played by John Malcowitch. the only criticism on him is that we don't get to see to much of him. The only character I didn't really like was Questular Rontoc: Whose only apparent role was to serve as an obscure love/hate interest to Zaphod, as well as being a device to express the humorous annoyance at Vogon bureaucracy. As for the rest of the film: Visually it's great. The good use of puppets instead of crazy cgi-ed critters contributes to the zaniness of the movie and the book-entries, one of the things that shouldn't be dropped, Are brilliantly animated. Though I never really pay much attention to music in movies, I liked the intro song "thanks for all the fish" and the orchestration of the original theme of the radio show gave me chills. The story was good, mostly staying with the main theme of previous versions while adding new fresh twists, but the pace of the movie might have been a bit excessive. One wonders how the movie might have been if it was about 30 minutes longer. All the more reason to get the DVD when it comes out, I guess.
All in all its a great film, although I guess a non-HHGG veteran would enjoy it better since he wouldn't be familiar with many of the jokes. Besides that there is a lot of new stuff for fans like me, who have learned the previous versions by heart, to enjoy so whether you are a hardcore fan or a casual movie-goer, give this one a look-see.