Overrated

Absolutely Fantastic

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The imagery in this film even caught the attention of my teenage son (briefly), but for someone who fondly remembers the books and BBC TV series it's simply too hard to watch this film without recalling that same TV series. An ideal film would have had Simon Jones as Arthur, David Dixon as Ford, Steven Fry as the narrator, Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, Zooey Deschanel as Trillian - and a director who had a clue about comic timing, and was prepared to incorporate more material from the book, less new material that was a waste of screen time.Sorry to Martin Freeman, you're a great Bilbo, but you don't capture Jones' alternating mix of acerbic intellectualism and outright panic. Mos Def has none of Dixon's wide-eyed lunacy, and as much as I loved the work of the late Alan Rickman, he really should have watched the TV series as a primer for his voice-over of Marvin. Fry was great, and clearly must have been influenced by the TV series, and I think Rockwell did very well with what was plainly a very different take on Zaphod for the film. More power to him. Bill Nighy was fine, but I miss Richard Vernon's Slartibartfast. The film's visual effects were brilliant, especially the destruction of the Earth and the Magrathean shop floor. Credit too for the truly dingy look of the Vogon constructor ship. Questions: Why does the Guide's animation look so awful in the film? And what was with the Humma Kavula sub-plot? It seemed to go nowhere, almost as if the character were to be reintroduced in a sequel. Less John Malkovich, more one-line comedy from the book, I say. Garth Jennings directed this film without apparently any feel for the comedy of the source material. The lines were delivered too quickly, punchlines were lost. There were just two times I laughed out loud during the film. One was when Ford and Arthur dropped out of the Vogon ship, rather than being blown out. The other was Arthur saving Ford from being run down - and only then because the car Ford was trying to greet was a Ford Prefect. That would have gone right over the heads of most cinema-goers, I'm sure. Of the other new material for the film, the point-of-view gun was a cute idea, but lacking the deadly, mind-warping scope of the total perspective vortex, which seems like a similar idea on a larger scale. I hate that this review sounds like a whinge from someone set in his ways, but I truly believe comedy has been the biggest victim here. Perhaps someone sympathetic will take charge of this story with a reboot in about five or 10 years' time. I have my fingers crossed.

I came out of the movie theatre feeling unsatisfied with this movie. Being a big fan of the book and the TV series, I had certain expectations. Some of these expectations were met, some weren't. The characters were mainly very good - Arthur Dent, Trillion, Slartibartfast, Zaphod Beeblebrox. In fact Beeblebrox was very cool, but unfortunately they ruined is character later in the movie when something happened to him and he ended up in a drunken state for most of the movie after. Ford Prefect was not as likeable and Marvin the Paranoid Andriod was not good at all. I just didn't like the character like I did in the book and TV series.The movie did have some good moments - like a Magrathean painting Ayers Rock red. Most of the trade mark jokes were there too, but there were also new scenes not from the book, which I had my doubts about - like a visit to the Vogon home planet to rescue Trillion from the Vogons. The movie felt very rushed at times, which is probably understandable as they had to condense a lot of material into an hour and a half. So scenes that progressed at a leisurely pace in the TV series whizzed through very quickly, which unfortunately took away a lot of the humour from them.The orginal actor who plays Arthur Dent makes a cameo and so does the original robot for Marvin (All though his is a non-speaking cameo).

Watching the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was about the same as watching Spaceballs from the space adventures to the knife as a light saber and to Marvin. But, with Spaceballs, it was more of a parody of the Star Wars saga. Now by venturing back to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy what I found interesting was the commentator who spoke throughout the film; explaining the universe and what our fellow characters were up to and saying a few goofy things here and there. The movie itself was a bit weird and made me cock my head right and left throughout the movie. I did, however; like the story-line of the film and the way everything turned out such as the costumes, stage sets, and etc. The music I found was really fun to tag along with and as weird as the film I just had to finish it and I might even consider watching it here and there. But, the price I paid for it brand new was worth it.

This can draw comparison to the BBC series and the book. If you've seen the series and read the book, you know what I'm talking about. Even you haven't (either or neither), you will still enjoy the movie. It was pretty faithful to the book. It had to cram everything into less than two hours, while the series could draw everything out, which was good and bad in both cases. I liked the "new version" of Marvin, and all the performances were at least decent. I think the only thing I preferred in the original series was the "two heads" of Zaphod. Other than that, I liked both versions about the same. I also think they should have added the "mostly harmless" version of Earth. This wasn't too bad. You might like this if you give it a chance.** 1/2 out of ****