Movie Review: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (C)

First off, if you haven’t read anything by Douglas Adams and are considering seeing this movie, don’t. Instead, go buy The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, enjoy it, buy the next four books, enjoy them, and then reread the following review and decide if you want to rent the movie.

If you have read some or all of Douglas Adams’s five-book series, you have likely been looking forward to this movie for some time. This review is written mainly for these people, and it contains the following recommendation: temper your expectations heavily. There are a number of grave miscalculations in the movie and only a few successes. I will begin with the problems.

First, the casting and characterizations are off in several important ways. Arthur Dent, as played by Martin Freeman, is just about right in his constantly overwhelmed and clueless state regarding the universe into which he has just been forced, but almost all of the other characters miss the mark substantially. Mos Def finds some comedy as Ford Prefect, but his Ford frequently plays for over-the-top, hysterical humor rather than the laid back to the point of fatalism approach that Adams’s seasoned hitchhiker takes in the books. This works sometimes, but more often it just devolves into American-style slapstick silliness. Zaphod Beeblebrox, played by Sam Rockwell, has exactly the same problem. Zaphod is a character who, in the book version, utters lines like, “Shee, you guys are so unhip it’s a wonder your bums don’t fall off.” Rockwell’s Beeblebrox is like a Texan on speed, always overplaying the moment and never relying on his own deeply held personal sense of cool. His insane physical behavior coupled with his idiotic intellect make him almost painful to watch. Zooey Deschanel’s Trillian isn’t offensive in any way, but neither is she terribly interesting. She certainly isn’t the brilliant, brains-behind-the-idiot-men astrophysicist that Adams originally created, and her role as Arthur’s love interest seems forced. The two other supporting characters, Marvin the robot and Slartibartfast, are pretty much right on the money, which is nice but also not surprising since they seem to have the highest number of lines that are unaltered from Adams’s original.

The nature of several of the other miscalculations falls in line with the characterization problems. The movie consistently plays for drama, action, slapstick, and romance when the true heart of Adams’s novels is the understated, intellectually absurd, dry-witted British cool of every character aside from the displaced earthling Arthur Dent. Even on the rare occasion that Ford or Zaphod do panic in the books, they do it without pratfalls and total hysteria. A love story between Arthur and Trillian drives much of the plot, and it feels extremely contrived and generally distracting. It is worth noting that Adams did finally allow Arthur to fall in love, but not until the fourth book in the series. Why? Because it isn’t that type of story. In Hollywood, however, it is.

The final miscalculation is the utterly mind-crunching compression of the storyline, which is so smashed together as to be nearly incomprehensible. This is probably a result of the necessary confines of a movie-length rendering of the story, but if the movie is going to add a love story between Arthur and Trillian as well as an unexplained trip to meet religious zealot Humma Kavula (a storyline not included in the books), then why must everything else be so rushed?

I realize that I am evaluating the movie solely on the basis of what the books tried to do. There are two reasons for that. The first is that the style and substance of the books are what made them so interesting, and I am frustrated by the movie’s unnecessary alterations in tone. The second is that the movie isn’t good enough to stand on its own. As a free-standing sci-fi movie, it feels (or I imagine it would feel, since I can’t process it without the influence of the books) disconnected and chaotic, with much that we’re meant to understand but that is never quite explained.

The best part of the movie is the way it looks. I suspect that most Guide fans have long desired to see a competent visual representation of all of the various locales described in the novels, and the movie does a pretty good job with all of these. The ponderous, rubbery Vogons are right on, as is the clean white interior of the starship Heart of Gold. Most impressive is the interior of the planet-factory Magrethea, where vast tracts of hyperspace contain multiple planets under construction as well as the countless fascinating pieces of machinery doing the assembly. The one area where the visuals miss the mark is in the Hitchiker's Guide itself. The book is illustrated with lame, low-tech animation, where actual short video clips would be much more effective and potentially funny.

Overall, however, the solid look of the movie doesn’t make up for its many miscalculations. It simply feels like the director didn’t get the humor and wit of Douglas Adams, and the lack of understanding is deeply damaging to the final product. If you’ve been looking forward to this movie for a long time, go see it, but expect only mild satisfaction.

Grade: C


Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz reads his painful poetry to Ford and Arthur. In this scene, there is a voiceover (explaining how bad Vogon poetry is) for much of the poetry reading, which prevents you from actually hearing the poetry. Yet another miscalculation.