Hogfather - A Disappointment

[awmperry]

Contains Spoilers.

A friend of mine recorded Hogfather for me off Sky One. I'd heard good things about it from those who saw clips at the Con, Pterry himself was very keen on it, and the production stills I'd seen had looked the part. So I was expecting a fairly passable, if not good, adaptation. I wanted to enjoy it.

And what a bitter disappointment.

The acting's reminiscent of a school play, the blocking and editing is clumsy, the funny scenes from the book have somehow been hacked to bits to remove any trace of humour, and Teatime, I fear, brings a whole new meaning to the term "deeply crap". The stupid laugh, for instance, and that utterly incongruous American accent? Even Peter Guiness, who was so good in Redcap, mugs it up badly as Medium Dave. And even the Wow-Wow Sauce explosion is disappointing...

And it doesn't help that any subtlety in plot is beaten about the head and neck by the blunt object of exposition, and every joke is battered to within an inch of its punchline and then explained, just to make sure that even the comatose couldn't fail to understand it. And the dialogue... oh god, the dialogue. If it were any more on-the-nose it would be up it.

Oh, it's not all bad. The production design has the right Discworld feel, Nobby's well cast, and I can just about buy Susan, but much of the casting is very curious. Ridcully¹ isn't suitably bullish, for instance, and both David Jason and Tony Robinson are largely wasted. Death's made of bleedin' styrofoam (and for heaven's sake, with modern special effects, how difficult can it really be to animate Death's jaw?), and the scythe appears to be made of tin foil.

And what about the sound mix? The Castle of Bones' collapse is silent - I can't remember if it was in the book, but on film it doesn't work - and the Voice Of Death (both in the Susan and Death versions) is the laziest I've heard. Just a reverb added, no bass... not a patch on the sepulchral and, arguably, definitive tones of Christopher Lee as used in the cartoon. Any Discworld film needs a good Death, and Hogfather, I'm afraid, hasn't.

And just as a final, departing kick in the teeth, the "Coming Next Episode" bit at the end of Part One gives away almost the entire plot of the second half. Notable scenes? They're there. Plot points? Yup, got them all too. The ending, complete with insipid happy-clappy waving? Of course!

(Of course, this is by no means Hogfather's first foray into spoiler-verging foreshadowing. Oh no - the whole plot point about the Tooth Fairy's castle being a drawing is clumsily driven home in the first half hour.)


Ho, ho, bloody ho.



(And for the sake of completeness, why hasn't Death's handwriting in the film got serifs?)

¹ - Ridcully should be played by Brian Blessed, quite simply. He is the only way.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting ... perspective. But I believe Pterry has made it pretty clear that, in his opinion, making Death's jaw move would have been something akin to heresy.

I've only seen the promotional clips, but it's safe to say that my opinions (http://outerhoard.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/hogfather/) differ in several respects from yours. For example, I'm surprised you think Nobby's well-cast; to me he looks way too normal (not to mention too heavily-built and puffy in the cheeks, accustomed as I am to the Kidby drawings). OTOH, all the clips I've seen with Peter Guinness were great.

I agree that Ridcully wasn't quite right, though.

-- comment from Adrian at outerhoard.wordpress.com

[awmperry.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Nobby could have been better, but I was trying to be positive. ;-)
I always think of Nobby as Tony Robinson in Baldrick mode, but ho hum.

Peter Guiness I usually like, but in some scenes he was terribly hammy - perhaps due to the blocking, I'll admit.

As for Death... yeah, I know his jaw isn't supposed to move, but on film it doesn't work so well. With the voice as in the cartoon it could - Christopher Lee in full graveyard mode has more of an "in your head" sound.