First, the good stuff. Pratchett occasionally left me in stitches with a particularly clever line. Dribbler's lurid posters are particularly funny: "Pelias and Melisande: A Storie of Forbiden Love. Thys wille shok you! With a 1,000 elephants!" Some truly groan-worthy puns also slip in: "What's up, duck?" is especially memorable, in part because in hindsight one can see how Pratchett must have set up this pun with hand-rubbing glee. And Pratchett gives the occasional line of funny-yet-true description: "Dibbler’s expression was the expression worn by something long and sleek and white as it swims over the reef and into the warm shallow waters of the kiddies’ paddling area." The introduction of "banged grains" is also a choice moment. Finally, the entire ending sequence of this book is hilarious, starting with the premiere of "Blown Away" in Ankh-Morpokh. The looniness implicit in what happens at the end--the creeping horror, the wizards flying through the air (or on the ground, in a wheelchair, no less), the dashing young hero--excellent stuff.
Until the ending, however, Moving Pictures has difficulty finding humor in anything but one-liners. Some of Pratchett's inventions were more clever than funny--for instance, his explanation of how cameras work (the cranks whip little demons who paint each frame one by one). And there were long stretches where characters did stuff, but it was neither humorous nor suspenseful.
What saves these long segments from sinking into boredom is Pratchett's deft skill with his characters. In some way all of his characters are stereotypes; but by the end the individual characters of Vincent, Ginger, Dribbler, and the various trolls (especially Detritus) are distinct and comfortable in the reader's mind. I found none of them annoying, and more than a few of them actually sympathetic. In particular I'd like to point out Gaspode the Wonder Dog. He starts off as a cheap gimmick, a unsubtle way of getting laughs (a talking dog! who woulda thunk?) but he gets one of the most poignant final scenes of any character in the book--a testament to Pratchett's skills at building him up.
Finally, a quick word about the plot. Objectively, it doesn't make sense; but among the internal logic of the book, everything sort of hangs together. I could even stomach the "Big Bad Evil" who is the enemy here, although it's cliched as hell. I know some other people thought the plot was pretty dumb, but actually I sort of liked it, with all its inanities, and it certainly set things up well for the final climax.
This is not a great book, and at times it drags, but it's a book that I will remember fondly. And, of course, it has impelled me to start reading the rest of Pratchett's immense Discworld ouvre. If you're in for some light reading, lightly peppered with laughs, and filled with characters you will grow to appreciate, you can't go wrong with this book.
NOTE: as far as I know, this book has no clear ties to any other Discworld book. I know that I, without any previous knowledge of Discworld, could understand it just fine, and it doesn't lend itself to a sequel.
Copyright © 2002 Steven Wu 