Movie Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Timmy and I went to see this last weekend but I'm just now getting around to writing this up. Sorry.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the big budget film adaptation of the book, radio series, and BBC television series of the same name. It is a perfect blend of science fiction and absurdity. I was first introduced to the work of Douglas Adams in high school when I read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It grabbed me right from the first page. "The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." See? And it just gets better! My favorite character (as is most people's) was Marvin the Paranoid Android. When he stood up to the gigantic black battle tank and told it to "guess" what he was armed with, which turned out to be "Nothing at all, not an electronic sausage," and the machine got so angry that it smashed down the walls and the ceiling and the floor, thereby plummeting fifteen stories and smashing itself to bits - Hell, that's funny. Anyway, I went back and read the Hitchhiker's Guide next and it did not disappoint at all. I was very excited and a little nervous when I heard they were making a film version.

It's the story of Earthman Arthur Dent, who is saved at the moment of the Earth's demolition by his friend Ford Prefect, who it turns out is Not from Guildford as he had claimed, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelguese. Their hitchhiking adventures take them literally across the galaxy, with the help of Zaphod Beeblebrox - the two-headed, three-armed President of the Galaxy, Trillian - an Earth woman who is traveling with Beeblebrox, and the manically depressed Marvin the Android. The movie did a pretty good job of capturing the feeling of the book. I especially liked how they incorporated several details mentioned in the book, such as the jewel encrusted crabs that the Vogons enjoyed smashing to bits, and the happy doors that sigh as you walk through them. Obviously the movie is not exactly like the book. In fact, about halfway through the movie the plot takes a sharp turn to the right and ends up in a completely different place than I was expecting. But I think it all worked out. I do have to nitpick the ending. It was different than the book's ending, and I feel like it is contrived and lame. But that's just my opinion. The actors were great. Arthur Dent and most especially Zaphod Beeblebrox were excellent. Another great addition: the excerpts from the Hitchhiker's Guide that were interspersed throughout the movie. "Vogon poetry is the third worst in the Universe. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth."

Overall impressions: The film was a little manic. It was almost as if the writers knew they had a lot of great material that they wanted to get into the script, so they shoved as much in as possible. It might be hard for someone to follow if they haven't read the book. However, very funny and well done.