Movie Log: Hogfather

So the British TV miniseries of Hogfather finally dribbled out to the great American public; it was originally supposed to show up on a US cable station for Christmas of 2006 (when it aired in the UK,) but that fell through, and if it was shown for Xmas '07 here, I missed hearing about it entirely. But now it's on video, though April is a weird time to release a Christmas story.

I saw the two parts separated by a week, like an old-fashioned mini-series was meant to be. (That wasn't on purpose; life has just been busy lately.)

It's nice but seems quite British, and some of the Pratchettisms get a bit smug when filmed, or don't quite work as well. Hogfather feels like a very faithful adaptation -- though I didn't sit with my copy of the book to make sure -- so that happens every now and then.

For example: to get that authentic DEATH voice, the actor speaks...slowly...and...distinctly, which keeps his dialogue from having all that much energy. And the line about a "pune, or play on words" falls very heavily when the "e" in "pune" is pronounced -- not that it was all that funny on the page to begin with. There are other things like that, enough to make Hogfather just a step slower than it might have been. (The fact that it's over three hours long doesn't help, either -- zippy satire isn't at its best at great length.)

So Hogfather is pretty much exactly what the conventional wisdom would expect: a pleasant realization of a mediocre novel by a writer who's done much better, and a movie of maximum interest to really serious Pratchett fans. I can easily see why it didn't end up on US television; if it had been my decision, I'd possibly have gone the same way.