Originally published 4/30/2005
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Director: Garth Jennings
Writers: Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the book by Douglas Adams
Producers: Nick Goldsmith, Jay Roach, Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman
Stars: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, John Malkovich, Anna Chancellor, and the voices of Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman
I should start by saying I very nearly brought a towel with me to watch The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the adaptation of Douglas Adams’ book series/radio play/TV miniseries/computer game. If you understand what that means then you know I have anticipated this movie for a long time, and whether my opinion comes from the perspective of distressed fanboy or simply a disappointed moviegoer I will leave to you to judge.
But what has arrived on screen after decades of development is an awkward bad marriage of slavish devotion and blockbuster audience whiplash. While some segments of the book are realized and reproduced word for cheeky word and will get their deserved laughs of recognition, the story and characterizations gyrate away from their natural shape out of a desire to be more conventional, more well-loved.
What makes the Guide series special is that it does not try so hard to be loved – it is eccentric, slightly anarchic, willing to pursue bizarre tangents and in teasing love with humanity’s petty foibles and arrogance. And its protagonist, Arthur Dent, is no classic hero, but an uneasy grump sure that the universe is out to get him, and never more surprised than when he learns it actually is.
This is not the stuff you make a Star Wars-sized movie out of, and yet you either must spend that amount of money or submit to the staples-and-cardboard ethos of the TV miniseries. It’s a devil’s bargain, because the movie is whimsical and amazing to look at – the Jim Henson Creature Shop-designed Vogons are like 8-foot Dickensian toads re-enacting Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, while the Heart of Gold spaceship our heroes travel on looks like what might happen if the Sharper Image catalog featured a spaceship designed by a light-hearted madman.
In exchange Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman from the British original of The Office) is now more of an Everyman Doofus, a likable nebbish who just needs the courage to be more daring and spontaneous. In the world of Clever Screenwriting this is called creating a “character arc”, and the whole story now must be bolted to this narrow definition of emotional growth.
His fear caused him to blow it with an amazing girl he met at a party named Tricia McMillan (Zooey Deschanel). They charmed each other, then she invited him to drop everything and take a spontaneous trip to Madagascar with her.
In the real world we might consider it rational and cautious of Arthur not to quit his job and flit off to Africa with someone he just met an hour ago, but here it is presented as an impeachable feat of spinelessness, and he loses Tricia to a swaggering maniac who says he’s from outer space (Sam Rockwell).
But social failings are about to be of little consequence, as one Thursday morning Arthur wakes up to find that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass. To make matters worse, his best friend Ford (Mos Def) appears to tell him that – despite the best efforts of the dolphins to warn us – the entire planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a bigger bypass.
Ford is actually an alien, a traveling researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a tongue-in-cheek repository of essential information that has the words “Don’t Panic” on the cover), and is a practiced hand at inter-spatial ride-thumbing. Out of friendship he saves Arthur’s life, and the two soon rendezvous with the Heart of Gold, the experimental craft stolen by none other than Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, who just happens to be that jerk from the party. And Tricia’s there too, along with a depressed robot named Marvin (physical performance by Warwick Davis, voice by Alan Rickman).
This extraordinary coincidence is explained by the ship’s use of the Infinite Improbability Drive, which can whisk you to any point in any universe simply by calculating exactly how unlikely it is that you would spontaneously be whisked there. Extreme coincidences are a side effect, as is the occasional bout of turning into a sofa.
The actors fare only as well as they have anything to latch on to. Freeman plays the re-imagined Dent with sincerity but the character’s inherent one-dimensionality leaves a void. Deschanel is charismatic and as easy to fall for as ever. Mos Def doesn’t look like he was given much more specific than to be wacky, he is the most underrated of rappers-turned-actors but in laboring to be funny with what each individual situation calls for his performance fails to achieve cohesion.
Most exhilarating is Rockwell as Beeblebrox. The job of the President of the Galaxy is not to wield actual power, but to simply be outrageous and entertaining enough to keep attention away from the real powerbrokers. Beeblebrox, who has two heads, three arms and a criminal record, fits the bill, and Rockwell (long overlooked in everything from Galaxy Quest to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) is the movie’s most consistently dynamic loose screw. His Beeblebrox is more of a coked-up savant than the scheming playboy-adventurer of the books, but it suits the needs of this particular plot.
Eventually the adventure turns towards the real purpose of life on Earth, and the answer to the so-called Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. “You’re not going to like it,” warns Deep Thought (voiced by Helen Mirren), the super-computer who spent a few million years thinking of the answer.
This is in keeping with Adams’ work, but there are also some new wrinkles and diversions, including a religious zealot named Humma Kavula (John Malkovich), who has his own intentions with Deep Thought. The Vogons also get quite a bit more to do, possibly because so much loving work went in to realizing them.
I don’t mind this new material by itself – Adams himself altered the story with each medium it visited – and director Garth Jennings (of the British music video directing duo Hammer & Tongs) does let the movie’s hair down for a few imaginative flourishes. But in the final analysis it doesn’t have all that much to do with anything except to create extra scenes where our heroes run around ducking behind things while being shot at. And thus taking up so much of an already-breezy running time, material that might help us understand the story and its spirit is rushed, frantically incomprehensible, or muddy and buried under Joby Talbot’s over-emphatic musical score.
Non-fans may end up wondering what all the fuss was about. Non-fans may also wonder why the movie makes such a big deal about towels. The Guide provides a perfectly entertaining and accurate explanation, it’s just not in this movie, which is kind of an outrage. The only reason I can think why is that the filmmakers thought it was worth the sacrifice to make room for a few more seconds of something non-fans would want to see, like explosions. But if the result is as confusing and inconsistent as this version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has ended up being, I fear people aren’t likely to enjoy it anyway even with the explosions.