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The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Directed by: Garth Jennings
Written by: Douglas Adams & Karey Kirkpatrick
Starring: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Warwick Davis, Alan Rickman, John Malkovich, Bill Nighy, Thomas Lennon, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren.
Country: USA/UK

 


Two Earths

Reviewed by Hal Gray


Space Balls Redux.

This is a flick you really want to love if you got caught up in Douglas Adams' literary classic of fun and ironic pathos across the galaxy and beyond. Yes, yes, of course, fiction and flicks are different mediums and shouldn't be compared too closely, but how much could they fuck The Guide up, eh? Apparently about a parsec's worth.

First the story: A congenial, thespian alien saves his quintessential pasty-faced, English birk of a pal from the end of the world as we know it. ‘They'—sentient beings much smarter, bigger or uglier than we—are putting in an intergalactic highway and Earth is an obstacle for its creation. No big deal, really, happens all the time. In fact, Arthur Dent, the Englishman, is lying down in front of a bulldozer as the local council has decided his house is in the way of a new bypass (you see, irony is cosmic) just before Ford Perfect, the alien, plucks him out of harm's way and aboard a Vorgon ship. The good news is that they're alive; the bad news is that the Vorgons are the ugliest, least poetic—they euthanize people by reading verse—and most bureaucratic beings in the universe. Kafka would probably be in awe. Of course, they escape and are off on an adventure to, to, well, we're really not quite sure and after awhile we don't really care.

There is something about finding the answer to the meaning of life and eventually they do have to save Arthur's love from back on Earth. (How did she get into space?—don't ask.) But haven't we seen all this before on Red Dwarf or something very close to it? Or even Monty Python? And wasn't it much funnier? And wasn't that 15 years ago? Yes it was.

What we have here is a very thin plot stuck together with slapstick and cute quasi-philosophical interrogatives cut-aways inventively done in live action and computer generation with narration by a droll Stephen Fry. When the ‘silly-bits-in-between' become more amusing and interesting than the narrative, it's a sign that story and character development have gone astray, or better yet, weren't thought of in the first place.

(Director Garth Jennings and Producer Nick Goldsmith have music videos and commercials on their credit sheet. No movies. Of any kind. Disney gave these guys $80m or $100m US—it depends on whom you talk to—for the project, based on the strength of a personal recommendation from Spike Jonze. That's Hollywood, folks.)

Martin Freeman (BBC's The Office) is suitably put upon with just the right amount of spunk as Arthur. Mos Def (Ford Perfect) mumbles. Zooey Deschanel (Trillian, Arthur's love) is as patchy as a Magrathean quilt. Sam Rockwell (Intergalactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox) takes his lame-brained character over the top and stays there. (I see a Razzie in his future and/or a call from The New Beverly Hillbillies.) Bill Nighy (the alcoholic ex-rock star in Love Actually) shines as planetary construction engineer Slartibartfast.

The climax of Hitchhiker, if we can call it that, ends with 20 minutes to go when Zooey is saved by forms stamped in triplicate. Then Earth gets rebuilt in a high-tech denouement so that we can all feel better about ourselves.

When trade journalists enthuse about the Vogons coming out of the Henson Creature Shop (and not being computer generated) as a main selling point of the movie, that tells you they need any edge they can get. That's not a good sign.

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