The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (2 Disc Edition) [DVD] [2005]

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was Douglas Adams' epitaph, his best known (but not necessarily his best) work. Anyone interested in this film will probably know about the multifarious versions that have littered countless media and about the almost eternal gestation of the movie of the book of the towel.

It's not bad.

But it's not great either, which given the material, is a bit of a puzzle. And a disappointment.

Firstly, what's good about the film? Well, how it looks, for a start. The visual design is beautiful. Watchers of the rather more ramshackle original TV series will marvel at the care with which visuals and audio have been created. There are lots of loving little nods to previous incarnations of the story everywhere, including lovely little cameos by Simon Jones and the original Marvin, which is nice for a fan to watch. Clearly Stephen Fry is a good choice for the book, on so many levels. The book graphics are also vey well done and support Fry's vocals beautifully.

And, actually, the cast are mostly rather good too. Sam Rockwell did chew scenery rather playing everyone's favourite larcenous Galactic Prez but it's quite hard to play the big Z any other way. And of course, at the centre, Martin Freeman. He manages to pull off a mix of rather weary resignation and utter befuddlement beautifully.

The first time I watched this film I really didn't like Mos Def's take on ford Prefect. However, after multiple watches I'm much more impressed. For those of us used to Susan Sheridan's original Trillian in the radio series, Zooey Deschanel takes a bit of getting used to. It's less jarring if Sandra Dickinson's Trillian from the TV show was your first call. Having said that, she too was generally good and brought some nice touches to a role DNA always described (and regretted) as rather shallowly defined.

However, it wasn't all positive. In order to fit things into the movie, it's clear that things had to be pruned. But some of the decisions are inexplicable. For instance, when Arthur has his confrontation with Prosser, and is informed about the plans for the demolition of his home having been on display in the planning office for a year, the movie sees Arthur's orignial rapidly spiralling tale of trying to find them truncated to a limp, 'they were in a cellar', which pretty much destroys the momentum and the equivalence we are supposed to infer between what both Prosser and the Vogons are doing. This is a common happening throughout the film, with many of the great verbal jokes rather viciously pruned and made ot give way to visuals.

Which brings me on to Humma Kavula: apparently a DNA idea. The premise is pretty good, but the whole Humma Kavula plotline just vanishes off the radar and is left flapping around wondering where to go. In fact, the Point of View Gun riff that goes with it is a great idea, but is left hanging, utterly disappearing at the end of the movie (does anyone actually pick up the gun in the end? Where has it gone?). It seems awfully lazy that this supposedly terrifying weapon is completely forgotten at the denouement, to serve the ends of the last real problem with this film.

For me, the worst problem of all is the inevitable Hollywood-isation of the Arthur-Trillian relationship. One of the joys of the original story is that a lot of surpessed tension exists between them (especially form Arthur's side) and is never quite resolved, not even entirely in book 5 of the novels, Mostly Harmless . Instead, what we get is a typical, 'boy meets girl, girl runs away with alien, boy escapes destroyed planet, boy meets girl again and every one lives happily after' scenario. Once again, it feels just a bit lazy and cliched. It would have been nice to sidestep some of that for a change. But that's big studios for you...

As something of a completist fan, I have bought it; but not without some reservations, I must say.

A bunch of us went to see this in the cinema the moment it came out; all of us massive Hitchiker's fans with (admittedly) huge expectations. It was a tragic experience. Despite the `thrill' of seeing all my favourite characters re-imagined in a big-budget movie, l was quite simply bored by the end and just wanted it to finish.

It's hard to describe exactly what is wrong with it. Certainly they've removed many of the best jokes, or at least shortened them to the point the humour is lost. All the little clever subtexts and subtleties are gone. The (somewhat random) lurching storyline is gone too, replaced (apparently for no good reason) with a simplified version which can be summed up by "Earth blown up, but it's OK `cos they've made another one" with a new, seemingly irrelevant, section in the middle.

Martin Freeman's Arthur is OK but lacks the bewildered naivety that was so crucial to the original. Zaphod is less Captain Jack Sparrow and more Jar Jar Binks; the `disappearing' second head it a HUGE copout - the one effect they could've pulled off with CGI and they didn't bother. Alan Rickman should've made a great Marvin, but it didn't work - instead of the morose dark wit and resigned acceptance, the new Marvin just comes across as slightly irritated.

Listen to the radio series, and you'll be laughing constantly all the way through. Listen to it again, and you'll be laughing constantly at all the jokes you didn't get the first time. When I bought it on CD in my thirties, I discovered a whole new level of humour that I didn't notice in my teens. The film version yielded approximately one laugh per 20 minutes.

I make no apologies for comparing this with the originals; they took some of the best characters, concepts and dialogue ever written and watered them down so much the result is insipid, humourless and frankly boring. It's just a bad film.

To be honest, I quite liked this daft film, although I was a tad disappointed, because it bore so little resemblance to either the original books or the BBC version. Be that as it may, to one whom has not yet discovered the story of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in any of its earlier forms, this film does stand up on its own...if a little shakily.

Trillian is a rather more believable character than the one played by Sandra Dickinson in the tv series, and I do feel the acting standard in this is a good deal higher, as are, naturally, the production values.

Although the story this film tells is a hundred miles away from the original, it does tell a darn good tale all of its own, and gives us a decisive, deliberate, rather Hollywood-ish good ending which some people may well prefer.

Overall? Not bad. Not bad at all.