Category: Film

One of the things I like about Christmas is that there’s usually a veritable feast of films on the telly. Sometimes you can pluck out a plum, but it has to be said that many are simply turkeys.

Last night, the BBC gave us Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm. A definite plum as far as I was concerned. I’d not seen it before so I’m pleased to have rectified the omission. I have to say that I wasn’t instantly won over to the very American double act of Heath Ledger and Matt Damon as the eponymous Brothers, but as the story, and more to the point, the visuals unfolded, the more I was entranced. Gilliam has a remarkable talent for visuals, both striking and grotesquely funny. The scene of Red Riding Hood in the forest with the camera tracking was not only striking but magisterial. And scenes such as in the Duke’s torture chamber allow Gilliam to indulge his sense of the grotesque to the full.

But it’s when Gilliam pulls off one of his heart-stopping sequences that I see quite how brilliant he can be at his best. The sequence that begins with the raven drowning in the well and leading to the mud-child/gingerbread man absorbing Sasha, the young child in the village, was quite one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Probably because it did push all the buttons that were implanted by the original tales that I read as a child. I’m certainly glad I didn’t see the film sequence when I was young – I’d probably have been really scarred for life.

When the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy was released, there were some real stinkers of reviews; mostly, but not all, from die-hard fans. As I quoted at the time:

"The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is. I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular – but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie. Listen.

And so on…" 

So when the Beeb showed it as one of the films for Christmas the other night, I decided I had to see for myself whether it really was as bad as some people made out. And, at the end of it, I give it a 7/10 score. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly not the stinker that some have claimed.

Yes, there are some odd missteps in it, for example of Ford Prefect turning up with a shopping trolley full of beer at the beginning – why on earth would he have done that, when they then go off to the pub for the six pints?

Another misstep is the excision of some of Douglas Adams’ great lines. For example, the unforgivable castration of the great riff on the display of the council plans. The original was:

"`…You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.’
`But the plans were on display…’
`On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.’
`That’s the display department.’
`With a torch.’
`Ah, well the lights had probably gone.’
`So had the stairs.’
`But look you found the notice didn’t you?’
`Yes,’ said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".’"

In the film, this is unaccountably replaced with:

"’These plans have been on display at the planning office for a year.’
‘On display? I had to go down to a cellar.’"

Not quite the same impact, it seems to me.

I was also none too impressed with some of the casting choices, which seemed to me to reflect more on Hollywood’s whims rather than what Adams would have wanted for what is quintessentially British humour. So Mos Def, Sam Rockwell and Zooey Deschanel did not really work for me. On the other hand, Martin Freeman was a good choice for Arthur Dent, while Stephen Fry and Bill Nighy fitted the roles of the Guide and Slartibartfast to perfection. I felt less certain about Alan Rickman as Marvin; he seemed to bring an edge of unnecessary sarcasm to a character who, it seems to me, is a genuine zoophobic depressive.

Some reviewers have poured scorn on the Humma Kavula character, played by John Malkovich, on the grounds that the character did not appear in the original material. But apparently, Douglas Adams himself wrote the character in especially for the film. Given that Adams was an atheist, his portrayal of Kavula as a "semi-insane missionary" seems rather fitting, and Malkovich is genuinely creepy in the role.

The look of the film was genuinely good, in particular the Vogons, their architecture and their bureacracy. There were strong echoes of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil here, I thought. The chief Vogon, Commander Kwaltz (nicely voiced by Ian McNeice), reminded me strongly of Sir Patrick Moore; almost to the point where I wonder if that was the intention… And the Magrathean factory floor was stunning (particularly after the humour of the rickety "ghost train" start).

The graphics used in the Guide have been somewhat updated from those created for the BBC TV series, but they have recognisably the same style, which is a good thing.

And there were some nice touches. For example, giving Simon Jones (who played the original Arthur Dent) a cameo role as the Magrathean recording, and the appearance of the Marvin android from the BBC TV series as an extra in one scene. Many more exist, as described in the IMDb’s Trivia page for the film.

All in all, I enjoyed the film.