Rant or Rave: The Colour of Magic

The Colour of Magic is Terry Pratchett's very first Discworld novel. There have been more than 30 since that one. I love them all. They very in their flavor and overall enjoyability, but that range is from good to absolutely fantastic. At his best, Pratchett is in my top five favoritest authors. At his worst, he is still better than the majority of authors I have read in my life. Oh, and as you might guess from the spelling, he is British.

But this isn't a Rant or Rave about the book, which is frankly one of the weakest of the Discworld books, but of the made for TV movie of the book, also British. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I haven't read the book in many years, so my enjoyment wasn't overly colored by my perception of the movie's "accuracy", but it definitely captured the feel of Pratchett's world and it's overall satiric and ironic over- and undertones.

The heart and soul of the Color of Magic (American spelling) is the Luggage, Twoflowers and Rincewind. And the movie pretty well nails all of those quite nicely. The acting is very good, the CGI and other effects are good, occassionally great, and the script and pacing work quite well.

So, a big rave for The Colour of Magic. An even bigger rave for Terry Pratchett and the Discworld books. If you haven't read them and enjoy British humor (along the lines of Monty Python or, perhaps, Eddie Izzard), then I strongly recommend them to you. They are all extremely funny, and the best of them are also highly satiric, lampooning such things as Death, the Cinema, Anthropology and Mythology, Economics, Race Relations, Police forces, Art, Music, War, and... well, probably a little bit of everything else as well.