Dirk Gently movie review

This review is not full of spoilers but you still might want to watch the movie first. It's about an hour long. Here is the first part. They are all on YouTube until someone deletes them for copyright infringement.





Someone finally posted Dirk Gently on YouTube. Umm...I actually liked it. Was not expecting to like it at all. The plot line is very different from the book, and the character Dirk is played completely differently. However, it's actually pretty funny. Not to the degree of Douglas Adams, of course, but they've trimmed it down to be much much much simpler.

There is no alien or electronic monk or ghost. These are the things I liked about the book: it's a supernatural detective story, and I was annoyed that the movie didn't have ANY of that. But then they did bring in a timey wimey element, and that made things okay.

They took the real heart of the book and went in a different direction with it. They grabbed onto the whole thing about the interconnectedness of everything and made that the central focus. It's very easy to follow compared to the book. I had to read and listen to the book several times before I completely understood what all the different parts of the story had to do with each other. The movie is dumbed down but more digestible. However, the humor is subtle in that classic Douglas Adams way. There are a lot of physical jokes that they don't call attention to. (I like that instead of having a white board, he just roller paints his chalkboard white every time he wants to erase). Also, they grabbed onto the whole thing about Dirk and lost cats. That became the focus.

The biggest change is that in the book, Susan is the daughter of the wealthy Gordon Way who goes missing (and is the ghost in the story). In the movie, Gordon had gone to college with Dirk, Richard, and Susan, and is Susan's ex-boyfriend. Very different. But he still goes missing, so she's just as concerned about his whereabouts.

The secretary part is pretty accurate, but I'm sad they left out the part where Dirk is on the phone and Richard has to keep writing "You have no secretary!" That is classic. In fact, someone else has acted out that scene perfectly here at this video. <-- This video (completely unrelated to the BBC video above) is actually extra cool because the actor who is playing Dirk was a friend of Douglas Adams and is the inspiration for Dirk.

As for characters, I think Dirk is supposed to be a little bit older and is described as a podgy tornado. He is a bit devious and con-man in a way, but I always figured him for being legitimate with the unfortunate appearance of being a con-man simply because he actually believes in the interconnectedness. The backstory that they give him in the movie suggests that he is actually a con-man most of the time. Richard is played as more of a loser than in the book. In the book, he was very intelligent, not to mention employed. Here he's kind of a layabout. Susan's probably about the same. There were no Michael or Reg. Reg was so important to the story, it seems strange that he's not there, but since they left out the whole ending of the book (book spoiler alert) where it turns out Reg is responsible for sparking life on Earth, I guess it didn't matter. But no electric monk either. Perhaps this gives them room for more episodes to fit in all those details, building up to being more and more supernatural. The sequel book did include Thor the thunder god, after all. I did hear that this was meant to be a test pilot episode. So I hope they make more.