Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Not perfect, but fun

In case you don’t know, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ was a science-fiction book by Douglas Adams which developed a major cult following.  This was then immortalised during the eighties in the British six-part TV series of the same name which, despite its low budget, (seriously – the man with ‘two heads’ has to be seen to be believed, trust me, it’s no ‘Avatar!’) was regarded very highly as a faithful adaptation and added to the following.

Since then, the author, Douglas Adams, had tried numerous times to get a big screen version made, but, despite the fans supporting this, it took until 2005 for this to happen.  And, despite the film also being written by Adams, for various reasons it received only mixed reactions.

It follows the original book/TV show’s format of a man about to have his house bulldozed to the ground to make way for a motorway, only to discover that aliens are literally about to bulldoze the entire planet Earth for similar reasons.  While the entire planet are mercilessly blown up, our everyman – Arthur Dent – is rescued by his best friend (who conveniently turns out to be an alien on a research mission to our planet and in possession with the titular Guide to the Galaxy) and they end up on the run in a spaceship, piloted by various freaks of the universe.

Now, first of all let me say the cast in – on the whole – fantastic.  Martin Freeman (from the UK’s ‘Office,’ but more recently ‘Bilbo’ from ‘The Hobbit’ is great as the long suffering last surviving earthling and Alan Rickman voices the ‘paranoid android’ Marvin to perfection.  And, while we have plenty of good cameos such as John Malkovich and Bill Nighy, the overall cast are let down by Mos Def’s ‘Ford Prefect’ and Zooey Deschanel’s Trillion (aka the obligatory love interest for Arthur).  These two seem to have little made of them apart from making up the numbers and drag the cast down.

However, the overall feel lifts the film back up again.  Of course most of the special effects are CGI, but there’s a great feel for many of the monsters who are all there courtesy of Jim Henson’s creature effects workshop.  The sets are also amazing and the universe really does feel alive with weird and wonderful creations.  Overall, I enjoyed it.  However, I do wonder whether a lot of the dislike came from those who, like me, know the WHOLE story.

You see, unless I’m really missing something, the film doesn’t have an end.  Or at least not a proper one.  If you’ve read the book or seen the TV show, you know the answer to various major questions (and I’m not just talking about the number 42!).  However, the film doesn’t address many critical plot elements that are set up.  Perhaps this is meant to be the first half and, because of its limited success, we never got to see the sequel/second half which would have answered the questions we die-hard fans were expecting.  Therefore, it did leave me wanting more than the film offered.

For all its plus points I wanted to see the end, which I only got a sort of ending that serves only as a midway gap that could be considered an ending if you haven’t read the book/seen the TV show.  However, I do own the film on DVD and watch it from time to time.  Like I say, it does have enough going for it to make it nice and light-heartedly watchable.  Although, I do wonder whether the ‘big budget treatment’ that’s been afforded to this film wouldn’t have been better spent on a new TV adaptation that could have fleshed out all the characters who seem a little one dimensional and also given us the ending that was a lot better than the film.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that