One day.... You'll be cool.

Tonight I went to see "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to mixed reviews. I blame the directing pretty much exclusively. I had seen an interview with the director, Garth Jennings, about Marvin the robot in which he said that Marivn was not going to look like you'd expect at all, and I thought "Oooo, you're treading into dangerous waters here." I'll agree with a friend here who said "The opening is so great that it raises your expectations really high up, and then the rest of the movie systematically lowers them again."

I will stand by the song "So long and thanks for all the fish" as being the best original song written for a movie in forever.

But I had such a conflict with Zooey Deschanel, who plays Trillian and graces the above photo. It's taken from "Almost Famous," a fantastic movie that everyone should see. She plays the main character's older sister, and in this scene she looks him (and all of us) right in the eye and says "One day... You'll be cool." When I first saw this movie I thought she was talking just to me. It was a marvellous moment, and remains my favourite scene in the entire movie. In fact, it's up there on my list of favourite scenes ever. In Hitchhiker I so wanted to like her, and I just couldn't. Her delivery of many many lines seemed like she was in a student film, and I just kept wondering whatever happened to that wise sage who made such a difference in young William Miller's life. This is where I blame the directing. I KNOW she can act. I've seen it! Just not in this movie.

Curses! It's movies like this that kind of make me think that if people would just ask my opinion once in a while things would be so much better. For example, they NEVER would have tried to make the villain and Zaphod Beeblebrox fall in love, and it would have been pronounced "Betelguise" not "Beetlejuice." The first half hour though was really excellent.

p.s. Anyone else notice that the irresponibly stupid President of the galaxy sounds a LOT like W.? I hope that was deliberate.