Which did you enjoy more...The movie, or the book?

[HotSoupBurns]

I read the book a couple of months before the movie came out and didn't think the movie would ever able to compare. Well when I saw the movie I was almost as blown away as the book.

What did you think about them and why do you think that way?

Sorry if this is a repeat thread  

[Zoutout]

The book.

Though the film was good, I still preferred the book, because of the pace you can go at with it, and the jokes can seem funnier (due to the pacing, and you essentially telling the jokes to yourself)

Bill Bailey, for example, was good as the whale, but a bit too fast to make it *really* funny.  

[Tinnumir]

I would have to agree. I much prefer the book. When you're just reading it you can imagine the characters to look and sound like you want, but with the movie, they're just there. Plus, I didn't exactly agree with some of the casting choices and plot changes that were made. *mumble mumble cutting off Zaphod's head mumble*  

[Lupe_Oceana]

The book, by far. Because there are all these funny literary things that are absolutely hilarious in print but don't translate well into movies, because the pacing doesn't work as well and sometimes it just goes too fast or doesn't work at all. Like this bit from book three, when Ford and Arthur are chasing the sofa:
"Eddies in the space-time continuum!"
"Oh, and I suppose this is his sofa?"
When I read this in the book I fell over laughing, but if you tried to do it in a movie it wouldn't work. It would be gone before you even noticed it.

Plus, the only real way to get the humor semi-right in a movie like that is to have a narrator, and that kind of defies the purpose. confused  

[Milleia]

The book for me. It was far more juicy and entertaining, it was never short on the jokes. The movie felt too short to me, although it's still good in its own right. 3nodding  

[Zurgi]

I definitely preferred the book to the movie, but then it is always that way with me. The books go more in depth than the movie can, and have a different kind of humour laced through them.

Some of the things in the books (like their logic as to why the Universe had a population of zero) made me do a double-take and re-read the passage just because it was so odd. Not something you could do in a movie, it would leave people in the theatre dumbfounded and they probably would miss the next scene.

The books are always better, in my opinion.  

[Beka_Valentine]

Lupe_Oceana

, the only real way to get the humor semi-right in a movie like that is to have a narrator, and that kind of defies the purpose. confused

I second that. A narrator is especially essential when the story and the characters are so quirky, like in Douglas Adams's work.  

[Lullabee]

Plus, in a book you can imagine what characters look like, and- more importantly sometimes- how exactly they act. Zaphod in the movie almost scared me with his general noisy, arrogant, mean, in-your-face-ness. Yes, that's sort of what he's like in the book, but I never thought of him as quite the way he was in the movie. I kind of thought of him as... *shrugs* at least a bit likable. Hard to explain.  

[wingnut the improbable]

To repeat what everyone else said: the book.  

[eccentrica]

I rate the move "could have been worse"
IMO it wasn't even comparable to the books.  

[Uber Cookie]

they were both amazing. i liked the movie because it was well done and the book because its the kind of thing i would usually read.  

[phantasmic kacaphony]

I thought they were both very well done, and even though the book will always be better, everybody did such an incredible job on the movie. Granted, some things annoyed me - Zaphod's head, Ford didn't seem as important, the love interest between Arthur and Trillian (Stupid Disney and throwing romantic interests out of proportion) - but some things were also very wonderful. Like the singing dolphins at the beginning, that cracked me up. And I though Zaphod was the greatest, practically the exant same as I imagined him - although without the two heads... *mumble*. Marvin was perfect, Arthur was magnificent, Trillian was gorgous, and Ford... well, I was dissapointed in Ford. sad But alas.

Me and my bestest best friend in the whole world, Alex, brought towels to the theatre. I had chocolate melted into mine. We sucked on it during the movie. Go HHGG fanatics, baby.  

[Daska]

I liked the book better because well its funnier. But the movie was almost just as good. 3nodding  

[Cooldude2356]

i prefer the book over the movie because your imagination is so much better. also, the movie went way too much into a love story and not just the atheistic beliefs that Adams wanted to spread (ever notice the titles of all those books?)  

[Nephthys Assyria]

I'm having a real 'comparing apples to oranges' moment here. But if I had to choose I'd say I like the movie more sweatdrop .(Please don't hurt me!!!) I think I'm, just better at figuring things out when they're shown to me, rather than when I have to imagine them. (That or I'm disturbingly lazy)

But I repeat, i don't think you can safely compare a books to movies, unless you want something to go horribly, horribly wrong.