The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


Normally, I don't like foreign films, but...

'Shaun of the Dead' meets 'Men in Black' meets 'Brazil'...IN SPACE!

There are a lot of ways they could have screwed this up and they managed to avoid most of them, but there are issues.

So, good stuff:

Pretty faithful to the book, though a lot is cut out for time.

Nice mix of film styles, from Peter Jackson-esque hand-held practical puppetry (think Heavenly Creatures) to Peter Jackson-esque use of CGI with some Oliver-Stoney/Spike Jonzey nature footage intercuts and Nick Parky improbability stop motion thrown in for good measure.

There was some effort to humanize the characters.

The narration and the guide segments (a contender for this year's 'best use of Macromedia Flash in a low-budget science fiction epic' oscar)

Stuff that could have been better:

The pacing. I felt like the film didn't so much interpret Hitchhiker's Guide as it did drive past it at 70 mph. Moments in the book that are meant to be dryly ironic come across as just zany.

They made Arthur way too sympathetic. He's a cowardly shlub who must overcome his neurosis to win the love of Trillian. Okay, the book sort of goes there, but mainly Arthur is supposed to be a bit of a clueless dolt who it's okay to make fun of. He's the avatar of humanity's foibles, not a true romantic lead.

Too little acerbic wit. Adams' characters are supposed to be interpersonally abusive, generally hostile and smug. Again, this has mostly been replaced with zany.

Overall: thumbs up, but I'd like to see a longer, slower-paced version for the DVD. Oh, and less wacky, more egghead, please.