The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

It breaks my heart to give this movie one star, having such fond memories of reading the books back in high school. But unfortunately, this movie was so god-awful, that not even remnants of the books' humor can salvage my opinion of it.

There are two kinds of viewers for Hitchhiker's Guide:
1) Someone who has read the books, or is at least in some way familiar with the series, story and characters;
2) Someone who has never read the books, seen the tv series, etc...

No matter which category one falls into, he should absolutely not see this movie. It's depressing, how bad this adaptation of the Guide turned out to be. I fully expected it to be hilarious, much like the novels were, and yet sadly, the characters fell flat, the humor was basically non-existent, and the story, while fairly true to the books, made little sense in the context of a motion picture. Maybe this story is one that must stay contained within the pages of a book, where text can be interpreted by the reader's own imagination, and the humor can remain contextual as opposed to visual. Because good lord, this movie even looked ridiculous. The characters in most instances were more annoying than funny, and it seemed that the movie presented the viewers with moments when we were "supposed" to laugh, but instead all that could be heard was an uncomfortable silence, accompanied by the occasional chirping of crickets. I almost felt embarrassed for the actors, as they crashed and burned in their attempts to be funny.

Arthur Dent (random British actor), wakes up one morning to find that his house is about to be demolished in order to make way for a highway bypass. Ironically enough, Arthur's friend, Ford Prefect (Mos Def) shows up to inform him that earth is about to be destroyed as well--in this case, destroyed by Vogons because the galaxy needs to make way for an interstellar highway. Har har. So Dent and Ford hitch a ride on the Vogons' ship, only to then be ejected into space and rescued at the last second by Zaphod Beeblebrox (horrifically portrayed by Sam Rockwell). Thus follows a quest to find the ultimate question of life and the universe, to which they already know the answer. The aliens, specifically the Vogons, look absolutely ridiculous. The director obviously thought they were a great source of comedy and increased their role in the story. Unfortunately, they are funny the same way that, oh...say, Jar Jar Binks is funny in Star Wars Episode I. In other words, they're stupid and annoying even while they think they are hilarious. The improbability drive that powers Zaphod's spaceship is never really explained, so those in the audience who had not read the books were inevitably confused beyond reason. We see the ship morph into several different objects (a flower, a rubber duck, a ball of yarn, etc), and it all looks completely absurd. I can only imagine how much worse it was for those who hadn't read the books.

If you have any kind of affection for the books, then I cannot recommend more strongly that you skip this movie. You will break down in tears as your memories of the books are brutally massacred in front of you. If you haven't read the books and are going in without any clue, then you will spend two hours trying to follow a stream of nonsensical images, most of which are meant to be funny, but are inevitably just stupid. In fact, this whole movie is akin to watching Jar Jar Binks for two hours, except that it's not quite as annoying, just really really sad.

I can only tell you that I felt incredibly sorry for my date, who, not having read the books had no idea what the hell was going on. I'm pretty sure he was sleeping through part of it in fact. I've no doubt that this means that he probably won't be accompanying me to anymore movies. Not that I blame him after this monstrosity of an adaptation.