*grumble*
2005-05-14, 2:01 p.m.

Crap. Weeks of anticipation. Whatta letdown. Last night we saw �Hitchik*er�s Gui*de to the G@laxy�, and it�s unanimous: We want our two hours and thirty bucks back. OK, so there were a couple of good points: The casting for Arthur and Marvin, for one. Perfect. The other was the title. Beyond that, let�s just say it sucked Really Big Hairy Things. The only person in the theater who laughed was my son, whose humor is firmly rooted these days in an autistic conundrum of armpit orchestras, snot, and potty jokes. Even those would have been funnier.

I loved the books, with their impeccable wit and sly British wiles. Had the movie remotely followed the first book it could have been SO much more. As it was, the few bits that were kept from the book were mostly devoid of the humor, cutting out crucial lines that would have added, say, 5 whole seconds to the running time in order to preserve the inherent charm. It was like taking a good wine, filtering it finely, tossing the good stuff and consuming the dregs. They took what could have been a fine movie and rewrote it into a WTF? movie in a bad way, pure dreck. Even sadder is the author himself had a huge role in the screenplay. I should have seen it coming, for the 5th book in the trilogy (yes, you read that correctly) was darker, angrier, as though written by Marvin�s evil twin. There were points in the movie that took the author�s already well-known atheism and ground it in the audience�s faces, then jumped up and down for emphasis. As for the running time, the movie could have been longer and kept the good stuff, if not for the HALF A FREAKING HOUR of previews for awful upcoming kid�s movies and commercials ad nauseum.

WTF? movies aren�t inherently bad. There are some great ones out there, trippy with no need of pharmaceutical enhancements. I don�t think HGTTG would have been any better if viewed while inebriated. Sad. But, here are some good WTF? movies, in no particular order, that I highly recommend:

1. �A Clockwork Or@nge� Like rubbernecking at a crime scene in the midst of a Dali exhibit.
2. �Barb@rella� H@noi Jane cavorting with blind angels and seeking Dur@n Dur@n. (And yes, that�s where the group got its name.)
3. �The 10th Vict1m� Bizarre hunter/hunted love story with the classic Brassiere As Artillery scene spoofed in the first Austin *Powers movie. Behold: The power of boobage.
4. �Br@m Stoker�s Dr@cula� Visually stunning; Tom W@its IS Renfield*; and Ke@nu Reeves as Harker was a nice (if unintentioned) comedic touch. Still, the ending of this gorgeous movie never fails to make me cry.
5. �Moulin* Rouge*� N*cole Kidm@n dies. Yay! And who knew *Jedi�s could sing?
6. �Games� This 1967 film is, hands down, the weirdest damn thing I�ve ever seen.
7. �The Ninth G@te� What secret does the book hold? Who is that mysterious woman? More importantly, why won�t she wax her eyebrows?
8. �Oldboy� An intricately odd Korean movie with a full-body-slam-didn�t-see-THAT-coming ending.

Anyone else have suggestions?

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