Well, I did manage to squeeze in a movie before the end of the year. So here goes.
Part one of this movie deal with Teatime, successfully I might add, getting hold of the Tooth Fairy’s castle and all the teeth involved. He manages to destroy all belief in the Hogfather and the Hogfather’s Castle of Bone disintegrates into nothingness. Death has done all he can to keep the Belief alive by pretending to BE the Hogsfather but against voodoo, it isn’t enough. He knows it won’t be enough and so forbades his granddaughter Susan from interfering in any way. She is human enough that he knows she won’t be able to stop from interfering. Susan learns that if the Hogfather ceases to exist, then the Sun won’t come up.
Part 2 reveals that Teatime has much bigger plans that just getting rid of the Hogfather. It appears that he has his eye (the one that’s not glass anyway) on World Domination. If Teatime can control the tooth-fairy, he can control the belief and hence existence, of anything. The storyline proceeds by the book, as it were, hahahahaaa. Teatime comes back from defeat at the hands of Susan, forces a confrontation with Death and loses. Banjo, one of Teatime’s former associates ends up as the new Toothfairy.
The movie does a really good job of following the book’s story. In some ways I thought it did a better job actually. It smoothed out some of those leaps of intuition that Pratchett required of his readers. Certain issues were plainly spelled out. I also thought the chronology was presented better too.
And Teatime? Oh my goodness, what a complete FREAKAZOID! He scared me. His voice was spot on and his casual dismissal of everything except himself was exactly as I imagined it when reading the book.
With those improvements, did I like the movie even more?
HA, NOT EVEN CLOSE!
The couple of Discworld movies I have seen all suffer from the exact same problem. Pratchett’s humor does not translate from the written word onto the screen very well at all.
While I wasn’t laughing out loud the whole time reading the book, I didn’t even crack a grin while watching the movie. It felt too long and all I could think of was “when is this going to be over”? That is the death blow thought for any movie for me. Also, why is Albert front and center of the dvd cover? He’s Death’s lackey, a minor side character. And he looks like some dirty monkey on the cover. He’d be better served as a villain in some Dickens book. I wouldn’t buy that dvd if you paid me!
A complete, utter and abysmal failure of a movie. I would not even recommend this to a hardcore fan because the humor just doesn’t translate. And Pratchett without humor is like vegan icecream.
And I’m doubly disappointed because the book was so good. Well, there’s always next year to find a decent movie.
Monstrous Regiment
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 