Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy

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Movie reviewed by John J. Puccio; Video/Audio/Extras reviewed by James Plath

"So long, and thanks for all the fish."

To fans of the late Douglas Adams, it must have seemed like dolphins would take over the Earth before his comic sci-fi novels ever reached the big screen. Waiting so long, it must also have been an bigger disappointment when the wry brand of Adams whimsy didn't quite make the translation from page to picture.

For all its huge sets, high-tech glitz, and CGI effects, the 2005 release of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fails to capture the deadpan drollness of the Adams novels, and this despite Adams himself having had a hand in the writing of the screenplay some twenty years earlier. The more one thinks about it, the more one comes to realize that it may have been because of the huge sets, the high-tech glitz, and the CGI effects that the simplicity of the Adams wit fizzled.

Not that the film is a complete failure; far from it. Indeed, there are many occasions in the film to make one smile; maybe enough moments to make the film a worthwhile viewing experience for the whole family. Certainly, there are more amusing moments in "Hitchhiker" than in most Hollywood comedies, whether said comedies are suitable for the family or not. It's just that most of us who read the Adams books expected something more. I'm not sure exactly what, just more.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is all over the map when it comes to humor. Some of it is dry and subtle in a typically English manner; some of it is silly and slapstick; some of it is frenetic and cartoony; some of it is outright dumb; and some of it is deadly dull. The Wife-O-Meter, a fan of British television comedy, found the film much less to her liking than I did and became bored about a third of the way in. She thought most of it was corny and dated. Perhaps I was giving the film too much benefit of the doubt while watching it, good-naturedly going along with the gags, hoping everything was going to improve in time. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't improve, and, in fact, it tends drag toward the end. Yet, as I say, I smiled enough times to make it through to the finish without feeling too uncomfortable.

Still, the film is curiously unsatisfying.

Since writing the first of his "Hitchhiker" novels in the early eighties, Adams's creations have been adapted for radio, television, stage, comic books, even a computer game. Because the story idea was always rather open-ended, it was ready-made for such episodic media. The plot involves a common, ordinary Englishman, Arthur Dent, discovering that a group of galactic bureaucrats is about destroy the world to make room for a hyperspace expressway. Luckily for him, his best friend, Ford Prefect, just happens to be a space alien (a fact hitherto unknown to hapless Arthur) who whisks him off the planet before it's obliterated. From there, Arthur and Ford travel the galaxy in zany adventures that Adams appears to have been making up as he went along. The novels, and the movie, run like an old Monty Python television show, which isn't hard to understand when you consider that Adams once said he wanted to be John Cleese, if the job weren't already taken.

Anyway, we've got a hit-and-miss affair in "Hitchhiker." One of the hits is the star, Martin Freeman, as the everyday Arthur Dent. Viewers may recognize him from the 2001 BBC television series "The Office" or from past movie appearances in "Love Actually" and "Shaun of the Dead." He is not a big star with a lot of star appeal, but he does fit the role nicely and responds to the part accordingly. Mostly, he gets laughs by reacting to the absurdly gigantic situations around him: the Earth exploding, planets in the making, that sort of thing. He is you or me, the ideal Everyman, whose best quip comes when he's faced with standing in a long line: "Leave this to me. I'm British; I know how to queue."

Zooey Deschanel as the Earth girl Trillion, Arthur's quasi love interest in the movie, is also quite fetching, but she doesn't have much to do beyond looking helpless on occasion and confused about whom she owes her allegiance to. I found her to radiate a charm that was hard to resist, and apparently so does Arthur, although he's generally too hesitant to make any moves.

More problematical are some of the supporting players. Hip-hop artist Mos Def plays Arthur's friend Ford Prefect (named by Adams after the English car, a car not well known in America). Def is surprisingly better than you might think, but he's not quite the Ford Prefect I had always imagined from the books. The fact that Def is black has little to do with it; rather, it's that he's not ironic enough. Early on I had heard that Bill Murray was a candidate for the part, and as Murray's comic style and persona have grown ever more minimalist over the years, he would have been perfect as Prefect. But, alas, I'm sure the movie's $50,000,000 budget would not have allowed for it, nor do I think Murray would have accepted a role as second banana. Let's just say Def is no Murray.

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