Finally got to see the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie last night, and I was not impressed. It’s as if they couldn’t decide what kind of movie to make, so they attempted to make them all. And it fails the most basic of tests: it just isn’t very funny.

Problem 1: The Script

Everything seems so rushed in this movie that you hardly ever get a chance to think about what’s going on (which may be for the best, since the movie hardly makes any sense). Firstly, they’ve turned the story into a heist movie crossed with the typical “fugitive-on-the-run” plot. The problem is that the chasers, the Vogons, are supposed to be this totally ineffective bureaucracy (paperwork for everything), but they still manage to catch up to the main characters at every juncture.

Some of the more annoying problems, though, are how the funnier parts of the story are dumbed down for the audience. The Babel Fish, for example, isn’t funny because you stick it in your ear and it translates other languages, which is what the movie seems to consider funny. No, the Babel Fish is funny because of the story around it, with a philosopher using it to prove the existence of God, thus disproving the existence of God. Very funny stuff in all the previous incarnations of the story, but ignored here. The fish is simply a means to an end. Get used to it.

The whole beginning of the books/radio/TV show is compressed into about 10 minutes: Arthur’s house is going to be bulldozed, Ford shows up (inexplicably with a shopping cart full of beer that just acts as another way to compress the narrative), they go to the pub to drink up and grab some peanuts (none of which makes any sense, because they apparently cut the explanations), the Vogons show up, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride…. It happens so fast that you get no explanations about hyperspace, the towel, or the Guide itself.

The Infinite Improbability Drive is another of those great concepts that just falls flat: it’s just an reason to turn things into other things and to give us a barf joke (which was pretty funny, I must admit). There’s none of the sly explanation of its creation (like the Babel Fish entry, it ends up just not being funny without the whole explanation).

Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that at some point in the movie, the Guide just doesn’t matter anymore. There are the occasional voice overs, but it’s as if they really had no way to integrate the material, so they just stopped trying. And as much as I enjoyed the dolphin musical number, I can’t help thinking that the time could have been better spent on the Guide itself. And what’s with the weird credits at the beginning of the movie, then, essentially, another title card after Ford and Arthur are adrift in space (though, again, I love that the theme from the radio series was used). It’s as if they played film editing bingo when working on the final cut.

Now, the good. I didn’t mind the Trillian/Arthur romance all that much. The Humma Kavula stuff was just fine, as was the whole Point of View gun subplot. Deep Thought watching cartoons was perfect. And powering Zaphod’s remaining brain-half with lemon zest hit the right note of zaniness.

Problem 2: The Casting

Without a decent script, it really doesn’t matter what the actors do, really, but just to comment a little on the major players. There was really only one standout among the major cast (luckily, it was the main character). The others were just fine.

• Martin Freeman as Arthur: great choice for Arthur, I’ve got no complaints here.
• Mos Def as Ford: not bad, but not actually given enough to do. There was a glimmer of oddness, but no real sense that he and Arthur were friends.
• Sam Rockwell as Zaphod: I know that most people seemed to like him in this role, but I wasn’t too enamored. He was adequate.
• Zooey Deschanel as Trillian: Eh. Okay, I guess.
• Stephen Fry as the Guide: great, as always, just wish there was more of the Guide in the movie.
• Warwick Davis/Alan Rickman as Marvin: there’s something about the way that Warwick Davis walks that makes it very easy to tell that he’s playing Marvin. Unfortunately, it just made me realize that it was a guy in a suit. Rickman’s voice as Marvin was, again, adequate.

I loved Anna Chancellor as Questular Rontok, though, despite the lack of screen time. She did a great job of getting that “in love with Zaphod” vibe going. Always great to hear Hellen Mirren’s voice, too: she played a quite nice Deep Thought. For the most part, I thought the supporting players really did a better job than the mains.

Summing It All Up

I just realized that the movie never gives the Guide entry on Earth. Bah.

Anyhow, the movie is, like Earth, harmless. The script is pretty scatter-shot and not very good. The acting is adequate. But I’d rather watch the BBC mini-series, or listen to the radio show.

Other Hitchhiker Links

• The Hitchhiker’s Game: this is a Flash version of the old Infocom game, infamous for driving gamers insane with its method of obtaining a Babel Fish.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio show: They are currently in the Quandary phase. The Tertiary Phase is available on CD.
• An old guide to using the IBM Parallel Environment for AIX: Lots of Hitchhiker Guide references. Just sorta weird.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 4:47 pm and is filed under DVDs, Television, Movies, Reviews, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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