Review - Film - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Cher and I attended the premier of Hitchhiker’s at Regal Entertainment’s Continental 6 theater in Denver, Colorado. It was showing in the big theater – a renovated monster that seats a whole bunch of people. It is the biggest screen in Colorado and the theater where I saw the first showings of such notorious movies as, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Terminator 2, The Matrix, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Troy, and each the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s simply the biggest, best movie theater in town and the only place to see a big screen special effects movie.

Having eagerly devoured all of the books in the series and having seen the BBC series in its entirety, I was very excited about seeing this movie. I was concerned about the stylistic choices I observed in the previews. In the end, the stylistic choices were not all that big a deal. I liked both the hollowed out golf ball ship design and the stumpy version of Marvin the paranoid android. The guide cut scenes narrated by Stephen Fry were also charming and effective.

As far as the performances, I loved Martin Freeman’s portrayal of Arthur Dent and that of Mos Def’s Ford Prefect. Both were warm, funny, accessible and believable. I also enjoyed Trillian played by, Zooey Deschanel. She was witty and smart without appearing aloof or arrogant – a marked improvement over the BBC series. Marvin was voiced by Warwick Davis. He did a marvelous job of intoning the droning voice of the beloved manic-depressive drone. In an interesting choice, Deep Thought was voiced by, Helen Mirren and it really worked though I though it took me a moment to conceptualize the character as a female. Slartibartfast, played by Bill Nighy was also perfect as the slightly barmy architect of the fiords of earth.

On the flipside, I couldn’t stand Zaphod Beeblebrox, played by Sam Rockwell. He made some funny choices like that of enunciating his lines in a fashion that was consistent with the speech patterns of George W. Bush. I didn’t like the way they handled the portrayal of the character’s two heads it just felt too awkward. Zaphod is portrayed as a bumbling buffoon without dignity – something that the BBC series and the books don’t do. His narcissism is overstated and ends up dominating Mr. Rockwell’s performance which is the weakest, by far, in the entire production.

As the first book in the series it is, by definition, merely the beginning of the story and as such, it is entirely reasonable that, at the end of the film, the audience is left wanting more. I liked this movie and found it to be entertaining though it was not what I expected. It was neither as good as I might have hoped nor as bad as I feared. It was simply ok and maybe a little better than ok.

RCS