“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.  Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.”

And so begins Douglas Adams’ masterpiece, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which over a vast number of years has morphed through several incarnations; a radio series, an album, a TV series, a computer game, a stage show, a comic, and erm, a towel. And now, after a twenty year struggle with movie execs, The ‘Guide finally makes its way to the big screen. So, was it worth the wait?  Well, yeah, it was alright.

See, I made the mistake of going to see this flick with expectations of catching a scene-by-scene adaptation of the book, and though for a while I was left feeling so miserable that not even the prospect of a brand new digital watch could console me, when I really thought about it, Hitchhiker’s wasn’t all that bad in the role of “Just another sci-fi comedy.” And did, surprisingly, offer a better explanation of why the characters are the way they are and do the things they do, when all it’s previous incarnations have offered is “Here’s a bunch of strange people, this is what happens to them.” OK, so the original plot is pretty much abandoned by the end of the second scene, replaced instead by a previously absent romance between your modern day everyman, Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) and the beautiful, world-wise Trishia “Trillian” McMillan (Zooey Deschanel). This is added to a totally irrelevant, yet **** performance from John Malkovich (Who was in “Being John Malkovich”, you know) as Humma Kavula, leader of a religious cult based on the belief that the world was sneezed into existence, and who’s followers end every prayer with a rather hilarious “Bless You.”

Yet you really can’t help but fall completely and totally with the whole film, especially Malkovich’s scene, one of the last ideas Douglas Adams put into the film before he sadly passed away in 2001, an event which many people (And no doubt Adams himself) considered to be a tad inconvenient. Non-Hitchhiker’s fans will no doubt love the humour (I dare you to find anything more funny than a little white mouse yelling “B*ll*cks!” as he faces impending death), the romance (the fact that the rather boring and plain Arthur manages to pull such a gorgeous gal’ like Trillian gives hope to us all!) and the special effects. Whilst Guide-Geeks like me will love all the references and cameos (“Hey, look! That’s the original Marvin from the TV series!”)  And be rather pleased to see better–rounded characters that actually have motives and reasons and personalities, something many would argue the original TV series was severely lacking.

Sam Rockwell is fantastic as the crazy President Of The Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, a rockstar-type character with two heads, three arms and an ego the size of a small planet from somewhere in the vicinity of Ursa Minor, stealing the show and truly bringing the character to life. Suddenly, for the first time in The ‘Guides history, Zaphod has a motive, a reason for joining our intergalactic explorers beyond simply being the bloke with the car (or ship, in this case). Arthur becomes a lot more likeable too, no longer is he this whinging middle-class nonce who you can’t help but believe deserves everything he gets, now he’s a far more charming, unlucky-in-love, slightly bewildered, slightly nervous young fellow who you really just want to smack Zaphod in the chops and get the girl.

And then there’s our Trillian, ditching the “I may look and act like a bimbo, but I’m actually some sort of quadro-nuclear-physcisistical-mathematician type” cliché from the telly, and evolving into an adorable fun-loving yet headstrong young lass who finds it rather difficult to come to terms with the fact that the earth no longer exists. Marvin the Paranoid Android suddenly becomes the cutest maniacally depressed robot ever; they really couldn’t have cast anyone better as his voice than Alan Rickman. Oh, and then there’s Mos Deff playing The ‘Guide’s researcher, Ford Prefect, but nobody really cares about either of them anyway. So, all in all, a decent little flick.  Cute, funny, clever, with enough in-jokes to please us geeks and enough Hollywood cliché’s to please the average cinemagoer. Yeah, it was nothing like the book, or the TV series, or even the original radio series, but come on, it had Zooey Deschanel, and that’s plenty enough for me.

And so, till the inevitable yet certainly doomed sequel, all I have left to say is: So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Recommended Links:
► http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com – The official movie site
► http://www.douglasadams.com - Home of the late Douglas Adams.
► http://www.martinfreeman.com – Martin Freeman, who plays Arthur Dent in the film.
► www.mosdefinitely.com – Mos Def – who plays Ford Prefect
► http://www.fedge.net/~zdeschanel  - Fan site for the ever gorgeous Zooey Deschanel

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