THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY
Not the definitve version of Douglas Adams work but a worthy addition to the canon.
By Steve Biodrowski
The long-awaited big-screen adaptation of the cult phenomenon (prevously seen in the form of radio plays, books, and a BBC television show) emerges as surprisingly faithful to the source material, even while restructuring the story to work in the feature film format. Many of the most famous comedy routines survive intact. This may be a glossy Hollywood movie, loaded special effects and some American actors in the leads, but the British sense of humor shines through.
The story follows Englishman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), who is having a very bad Thursday: his house is schedule for demolition to make way for a bypass. He is distracted from this concern by his best friend, with the odd name of Ford Prefect (Mos Def), who turns out not to be from Guilford after all; in fact, Ford is an alien, and he has some bad news: Earth is about to be demolished to make room for a hyper-space bypass. Taking Arthur with him, Ford hitchhikes a ride on one of the Vogon ships that destroy Earth. From there, Arthur and Ford join up with Earth girl Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) and president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell) for a series of loosely connected adventures that involve finding the question to the ultimate answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Not every element of the famliar source emerges intact. Fortunately the deletions are off-set by some wonderful new material. For example, the film opens with a hilarious musical comedy routine -- a song based on the famous line from the books "So long, and thanks for all the fish -- which consists of footage of dolphins performing a series of synchronized acrobatic stunts while the lyrics tell us what these gestures are trying to communicate to the stupid humans who just think they're performing tricks in order to earn another treat. As the song reaches a crescendo, the dolphins leap from the water -- up into the starry sky -- and do not come back down (because they are abandoning the doomed planet). It's a great visual and the perfect punchline. As for the rest of the film, it hews reasonably close to the familiar story, except that co-writer Karey Kilpatrick has tried to sew together the anarchic bits and pieces into a conventional plot structure. Part of the fun of HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE in its previous guises was that the reader/listener/viewer never knew where it was going -- Adams would abandon ideas before they could wear out their welcome and simply jump into something new, following odd tangents that always took the story into funny new places. The movie script, on the other hand, sets the plot up as a conventional quest: the characters have to go find something and bring it back to someone who wants it. And the character of Trillian has been expanded into a romantic interest for Arthur Dent, providing a cpnventional love story that plays out against the backdrop of the galaxy. Despite these attempts at structure, the film never really works up a head of steam. It remains a collection of very funny sketches, and the plot thread never really engages us; it just works as an excuse to tie these scenes together -- an excuse that really isn't necessar, because the scenes are usually funny enough to justify their own existence, apart from any "story development" they provide. The other weakness of the film -- and this was apparent in the British television series, as well -- is that the material really was perfectly suited for radio, where the narration, dialogue, and sound effects allowed listeners to imagine what was happening. Much of the deadpan narration has been retained, with its humor intact, but visually the movie has a hard time finding images to counterpoint the audio. Usually, the film relies on simple computer graphics (meant to represent animation seen in the titular guidebook); at other times, the narration simply plays out over non-descript action that feels like filler to keep the screen from going blank while we listen to the funny words. To be fair, one should point out that the motion picture does a much better job of visualizing the universe of HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE than the television series could afford to do. The small screen version was too reminiscent of old episodes of DR. WHO, with cheezy sets and special effects that, despite the humor of the storyline, could not simply be passed off as part of the joke. The film does a fine job of creating settings and special effects that are of a high enough quality to work in a serious film. At the same time, they display a whimsical quality in keeping with the material: the Heart of Gold spaceship morphs into numerous ridiculous shapes (thanks to the improbability drive); the unfortunate sperm whale that falls out of orbit doesn't look realistic enough to make the scene gruesome; and the Vogons are amusingly ugly and disgusting creatures. Ultimately, the HITCHHIKER'S film is not perfect, but it is very good -- and it nods affectionately toward its source, as when Simon Jones (who played Arthur Dent on radio and TV) briefly appears as a holographic communication. Balanced against its few disappointments, one must weigh the thrill of hearing "Journey of the Sorcerer" -- the famous HITCHHIKER's theme music (originally recorded for an Eagles album) -- blasted out of the theatre speakers in glorious stereophonic sound.
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