The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Year: 2005
Running time: 109 minutes
Certificate: 12
Language: English
Screenplay: Douglas Adams, Karey Kirkpatrick
Director: Garth Jennings
Starring: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman (voice), Warwick Davis, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Stephen Fry (voice), Helen Mirren (voice)

Arthur steadies his nerves with a cup of tea.

If your initial thought is that a movie cannot possibly hope to compare to the near-perfect series of stories by Douglas Adams, well, you’d be right, but The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is pretty damn good all the same. The style and humour of the books is, I would imagine, one of the most difficult things to successfully transfer to the screen – the TV show had its moments, but left me underwhelmed (blasphemy, I know, but there you are), but they do surprisingly well here.

Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) is pretty average, and when we first see him, he is desperately trying to prevent his house being bulldozed to make way for a new bypass. In his pyjamas, slippers and dressing gown. This soon becomes the least of his problems, as the Vogon fleet (alien civil servants, basically) have arrived to demolish earth to make way for a new interstellar bypass. Luckily for Arthur, his best friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def in a surprising piece of leftfield casting, who turns out to be a really excellent choice) isn't human, but is just on earth to write about it for the most useful and well-read book in the universe: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Stephen Fry, who is simply the best possible choice they could have made), and manages to smuggle the two of them onto a Vogon ship before the earth is obliterated.

To recount the plot in any great detail would be to miss the point entirely, so I'll keep it brief. Arthur meets a fellow human survivor, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), whom he had previously failed to chat up at a party. Trillian had instead left with Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), who, it turns out, is the President of the Galaxy and Ford's cousin. Zaphod has stolen the spaceship Heart of Gold and is making use of its Infinite Probability Drive to stay one step ahead of the Vogons. Along for the ride is Marvin (Warwick Davis and Alan Rickman), a depressed robot, the original paranoid android.

Ford, Zaphod and Trillian try to fly Heart of Gold as Marvin looks on,
unimpressed.

Parallels are often drawn between Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python's Flying Circus and for good reason: it's so random yet brilliant at times, that it does feel a little like the Pythons made a sci-fi movie. Even the moments that don’t appear in the book blend with the overall feeling (it shouldn’t surprise you that Adams himself conceived of them before his death and wrote much of the screenplay).

It doesn't follow traditional narrative structure, and it's definitive Britishness did prevent it from becoming a huge international hit, but don't let that put you off; take it for what it is and enjoy the ride. Just don't forget your towel.

Score: 8/10

I thought I was alone in enjoying this film to the degree I did, but these reviews by Keith at the A.V. Club and Manohla at the New York Times suggest otherwise.