Customer Reviews

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [UMD for PSP]

5 star:		(128)
4 star:		(117)
3 star:		(80)
2 star:		(58)
1 star:		(84)

 

 

There's a simple reason this movie has taken so long to make, and it's this: while Douglas Adams' classic The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a hilarious book, it's a rubbish novel.

I mean that in the nicest possible way - it's one of my favourite books, but it's barely a story at all - more a set of dead-eye, deadpan observations on the absurdity of life, and particularly the British way of life, revolving very loosely around a chap in a dressing-gown. While that's great fodder for a comedy read, it's no basis for a coherent, 90 minute motion picture, especially one having the American market in mind.

It's a matter of record that Douglas Adams realised there was no story, but not until it was too late to fix it (about halfway through book two). From that point onwards made several attempts to pull everything back into a single coherent, archetypal story but totally failed, and in the process ruined the remaining three and a half books themselves, none of which are funny, let alone a good story.

A film-maker has a choice, therefore: stick with the material and film something which is not so much a screenplay as an extended, themed version of Saturday Night Live, or do some significant damage to the source material - "zap straight off to its major data banks and reprogram it with a very large axe", if you will - and make a story out of it.

The first option will in equal measure thrill and infuriate the party faithful, but bore the rest of the population; the second will most likely infuriate the party faithful, but at least has a chance with everyone else. Since the Hitch-Hiker's Guide is now twenty years old, there is probably a whole generation who, so far in their lives, have missed it altogether, so you can hardly blame director Garth Jennings for choosing option two.

What instead we should do is take our hats off to him: he's fashioned a great story but preserved surprising amounts of the source; his innovations are sympathetic and in a couple of cases (the point-of-view gun and the face-slapping devices on the Vogsphere) are a match for the original material; the wonderful production design thoroughly captures the loveable Britishness of Adams' story (the Vogons hover somewhere between the schoolmasters of `70s Pink Floyd and the sort of bureaucrats whom you might find behind the desks of some Ministry of Monty Python's devising), and on top of all that he's coaxed some wonderful performances out of the cast. Martin Freeman captures Arthur Dent's everyman perfectly and has real chemistry with Zooey Deschanel's Trillian; John Malkovich, Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey and both the original Arthur Dent and Marvin from the BBC TV series make hilarious cameos, as does the smiling face of the late creator himself, Douglas Adams, as the very last shot of the movie. That was a splendid touch.

The less forgiving purists are bound to gripe about what's missing; but on the whole I'm the more forgiving sort of purist. Perhaps there is something sinister in the conspicuous omission the Babel Fish "proof" for the non-existence of God - was that a Disney-required edit or just my perfectly normal paranoia? - and I was a bit sad my favourite exchange in all of Douglas Adams' writing was omitted (Arthur: "It's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young." Ford: "Why? What did she say?" Arthur: "I don't know, I didn't listen"), but overall this was an extremely enjoyable, touching experience and I can't think of a better way to have rounded off an otherwise trying Thursday.

Thursdays. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Olly Buxton

Thankfully, the film remains quite faithful to the spirit of Adams' book. For example, all of the Guide entries are taken verbatim from it. The massive budget results in a great looking movie that properly captures the scope and scale of the story. There is extensive use of CGI to recreate intergalactic space travel and the planet showroom inside of Magrathea (some of the film's most arresting visuals), but this is mixed with old school, reliable rubber costumes for creatures like the Vogons that gives them a texture that you just can't get with computers. This movie is light years ahead of the clunky BBC version which resembled a bad-looking episode of Dr. Who.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy may not have done well in North America because it lacked recognizable A-list movie stars (but then again, neither did the original Star Wars) with decidedly British sense of humour. Sadly, it failed to connect on a mass audience level despite a significant marketing push. Regardless, it is still an entertaining, big, splashy science fiction movie that manages to preserve the wit of Adams' book. So long now and thanks for all the fish.

"Making of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a fairly standard making of featurette. Not surprisingly, director Garth Jennings said that the key to this movie was in the casting. So, he gathered an eclectic group of actors.

Also included is an "Additional Guide Entry" which faithfully recreates the gag from the book about man proving that God doesn't exist but then it fails to include the book's punchline in which man goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed at the next zebra crossing.

There are three deleted scenes that amount to merely extra little bits that include Ford's update entry for Earth as "Mostly harmless."

There are also two "Really Deleted Scenes" that are basically goofy outtakes of the cast hamming it up.

"Sing Along `So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" allows you to sing with the film's catchy Monty Python-esque theme song cum show tune karoake-style.

There is an audio commentary by Jennings, producer Nick Goldsmith and actors Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy. It's a fun, relaxed track as everyone enjoys themselves watching the movie.

Fans of the book will enjoy the additional commentary track with executive producer Robbie Stamp and Douglas Adams colleague Sean Solle. They talk about the movie in relation to Adams' original vision and also speak at length about the differences between the film, the video game, the radio play and the book, justifying the reasons for certain changes. Best of all, Stamp points out the little details that are buried throughout the film in this excellent track.

There is "Marvin's Hangman," that allows you to play a variation of the hangman word game but with Marvin's robot parts.

The extras included on the DVD are done in the style and tone of the movie, including a clever feature known as the "Improbability Drive" that will take you to a completely random moment in one of the extras.

Having owned the first release of this movie on DVD, when I heard it was coming out on Blu-Ray I had to pick it up; after all, this was the movie that convinced me to pick up Douglas Adams' spectacular written novels (from Hitchhiker's to Dirk Gently) and give them a read. While watching the movie in 1080i was a pleasure, I was rather disappointed to find that many of the special features found on the original disc - including the absolutely brilliant interface with the interactive improbability drive that occasionally took you to an Easter Egg - were stripped out of the Blu-Ray disc. I could have even dealt with the loss of the interface in exchange for the movie showcase menu that allows you to access features, select scenes, and access the setup while the movie is playing, if only they had provided all the content on the original DVD. I've experienced this now on a couple of Blu-Ray discs and I find it quite upsetting (officially entering rant territory), that despite the capacity for Blu-Ray discs to hold 80% more data than a DVD, and 40% more data than a HD disc, that companies are skimping on features and selling the discs at an inflated price. While Blu-Ray may be the superior format, it's not going to gain in market standing by the release of inferior products.

Do you know someone who absolutely can NOT tell a joke? They're the person who, set up with the most perfectly hilarious joke in the world, will mangle it. Some people can "do comedy" and some people cannot. Douglas Adams certainly knew how to WRITE comedy, and all the written incarnations of "Hitchhiker's" are among the most hilarious passages of the English language.

This film, based on that brilliant writing, is like one of the world's greatest jokes, mucked up in the telling.

"Hitchhiker's" is NOT about story, and it is most certainly not about a love story. It's about attitude and a wry observation about how brainless much of the world is. This movie doesn't match the spirit of Adams' writing with two notable exceptions: Sam Rockwell "gets it" with his performance as 2-Headed, 3-armed President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox. Zaphod is the kind of character perpetually in search of his next great party. It seems that the primary benefit to being President of the Galaxy is giving him a great line to pick up girls. Bill Nighy also captures the right Adams spirit as Slartibartfast, a name you don't want to say three times fast. I give one star each for Sam and Bill.

Much of the humor of the book(s) come from asides and lines that are rendered for the benefit of the audience. Hero Arthur Dent learns the same morning first that his house is being demolished so that a bypass can be built, then that the earth is being destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet so that an inter-galactic bypass can also be constructed. His friend Ford Prefect (unknown to Arthur an alien from the planet Betelgeuse) hurries Arthur off to a pub and begins explaining about how the earth is about to be destroyed.

Chapter Two ends:
"This must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself, sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

In this film Arthur neither muses nor sinks and the cleverness of Adams fine and hilarious prose gets passed by quickly - as if the Mona Lisa were displayed beside the tracks of a speeding train, and the only glimpse you could get of it was as the train sped you past it.

Douglas Adams' words have ALWAYS been the "star" of Hitchhikers. That and the attitude I mentioned before could have been transformed into a serviceable film. No doubt at the urging of some Hollywood type, a love story that doesn't exist in any prior incarnation of the written word shows up in this movie and stops any momentum that might have been building dead in its tracks.

Marvin the Robot, one of the most memorable non-human characters in literary history, is given the voice of Alan Rickman, but the body of a walking trash can. Three decades after C3PO first appeared, it is inexcusable to botch Marvin the Paranoid Android.

This movie is hilarious and entertaining in a way that is not at all hilarious or entertaining.

*sigh* Now I don't know whether to look forward to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" or not.

Once again Hollywood follows the trend of rushing out the DVD of a summer movie, only to release a "deluxe" edition right before Christmas. I can't tell you how excited I was to buy this movie until I heard that the UK is getting a deluxe 2-disc version (which looks like a copy of the Guide itself), and the US will have to wait another 3 months. Keep in mind, I LOVE this movie, it just breaks my heart that such a great movie is getting such a shoddy release. Not everyone will care.. some people just want the movie and don't care about extras, but some of us do. It's become routine that a movie comes out early summer, is released sometime in September, and released again (only better) in late November. They've done it with Hellboy, they're doing it with Sin City, and now they're doing it with this. I urge you to wait for the special edition so maybe Hollywood will stop trying to make us buy the same movie twice.

I have loved this story ever since the radio show (which came before the books!) was brought to American airwaves courtesy of NPR Playhouse. I love the books as well and have a special place in my heart for the British TV show. I know the lines backward and forward, inside and out, and the one thought that kept popping up in my mind as I watched this new film was "Where are the punchlines?" Anyone familiar with the now-classic jokes will hear the characters setting up for a punch line--and then stopping before the gag is delivered! As previous reviewers pointed out, the story does not translate well into a concise storyline for film, and so the filmmakers tried to trim down the dialogue and concentrate more on plot. But the one thing that made this story a success to begin with was the hilarious diaolgue exchanged between characters under bizarre circumstances (and these funny lines survived through all previous incarnations: radio, books, & TV, until now). Plot, what there was of it, came second,and could be abandoned anytime Adams came up with a funny new direction to take the characters in. Since they were more interested in making a wacky space film instead of a truly hilarious one, they should have left out what original dialogue they kept (since it doesn't go anywhere here) and written entirely new dialogue that advances the plot more coherently. The new bits made up for this film were clever enough, and I believe even die-hard fans of the franchise will find something to enjoy. I think I liked it more this second time around on DVD than when I first saw it in the theaters. There were even things that I applaud them for. Take the cast for instance. Some actor choices were absolutely inspired, while others were horribly wrong. Mos Def, mumbling his lines in an attempt at an alien accent with no comedic timing whatsoever, ruined my favorite character for me, Ford Prefect. I was never crazy about the actor from the TV show, preferring the original radio performer, but now I think he's a comic genius compared to this film's actor. There will never be an Arthur Dent as good as the first, who played him in both radio and TV versions in such a way that he could never be replaced. (In fact, I recall hearing that the role was written with him in mind.) Having said that, I am glad that this new Arthur is nothing like the old one. In this case, any attempt at recreating the original would be an impersonation and not a performance, so it wise that they got someone entirely different for the film to make the role his own. I had thought Alan Rickman would be perfect as the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android, but his line readings were so pale compared to the original voice that I wasn't impressed. Now for the great choices: Zooey made a fantastic, adorable Trillian, taking a character that really wasn't originally a big part of the story (she was always off with Zaphod somewhere and hardly with Arthur at all) and making her into an absolutely necessary part of it all (a wise choice on the filmmakers' part; I think a lot of fans always wanted her and Arthur to get together). Zaphod fanatics (I knew some in H.S. but never was one myself) might be disappointed with the new performer due to their love of the character as brought to life by the same actor in both radio and TV versions, but I never thought much of his line deliveries or his take on the character and found this new Zaphod to be fantastic. And Slartibartfast (yep, I spelled that without having to check the book!) never came to life as he did in this film with Bill Nighy in the role. So, considering the near-perfect casting, this film should have been much better, if only they trimmed out the unnecessary dialogue that leads to jokes that aren't delivered, or...turned this into a miniseries where they could add back all the missing punchlines. Or recast the role of Ford Prefect!

Most people apparently didn't know that "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was a radio show before it was a book! Add in the quirkiness of Brit-Humor and Sci-Fi (think "Monty Python's Flying Circus" meets "Doctor Who")and you'll see why it's the way it is. Pure and simple it's a story of, well, "Life, the Universe, and Everything"!
I am a big fan of Douglas Adams'works but like most fans I feel the film falls short on many levels. First off was the lack of a second head on Zephod. Okay, so he "technically" had two heads (you see the other when he flips back his main one) but that's not the Zephod Beeblebrox I know. Zephod's two heads is his trademark look for crying out loud! I admit the actor did have Zephod's charm,but Mos Def as Ford reminded me more of "Cat" from "Red Dwarf" than Ford Prefect. Arthur Dent and Trillion were nicely cast. The Vogons were a disappointing joke. They looked like giant muppets and I'm sorry but the climatic scene at the end of the movie never happened in the books, radio show, or in the BBC Series and I personally thought it was a very horrible direction to take the storyline. The computer graphics of the actual "book" in the movie were too cartoony (the BBC TV Show was much better and you'll have to take into account it lacked the film's big budget for special effects). The half man/half robot computer-generated character (Featured big in the trailer) was created just for this movie and was a pointless use of special effects money that could have been used elsewhere.
The only redeming part was Marvin, the paranoid android. Alan Rickman (aka Prof Snape to the Potter Fans) was the voice of Marvin and I thought he did a most excellant job. Although it's obvious they went out of their way to make Marvin cute (I guess to sell more toys)I was very happy to see they managed to squeeze in a guest appearance of the original Marvin from the BBC show.
This is a Disney movie that trys to appeal to too many people without offending anyone and suffers for it. If I were not such a "Hitchhiker's" fan or if I had never read the book/seen the BBC Production, or listened to the radio show, I would be lost and confused through most of it. They didn't even try in some parts (Why was Ford's house need to be torn down for a bypass when it was the only house on a vacant street that did not seem to have any motorway anywhere close to show that a bypass was actually needed?) to make it believable (and no, Ford did not give the workmen beer to prevent them from knocking Ford's house down in any previous incarnations).
The DVD version's lack of the film's trailers on the DVD was icing on the horrible cake. I thought that the trailers were excellant and I enjoy looking at the trailer of the film I'm about to see whenever I get a DVD. Why they included some of the stuff they did include and not the trailers for the movie astounds me (although Marvin's Hangman Game is amusing)
The movie's a must for the die-hard fan, but if you've never heard of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy prior to this film then don't bother, you'll only confuse yourself.

Douglas Adam's seminal incorrectly named trilogy was always begging for a movie to be made of it... the first being made in the 1980s as a BBC mini-series. This show had the production values of a 1950s z-grade horror movie, yet it recaptured the feel and texture of the books, while the new movie does quite the opposite: it gives the story a much needed face-lift, but loses some of the things that made the books and the mini series so endearing.

Arthur Dent's house is about to get knocked down in order to build an overpass at the exact location of his house. Little does he know that in a cruel twist of fate, the same thing is about to happen to Earth. Fortunately, Ford Prefect comes in the nick of time (towel in hand) to wisk Arthur away from the doomed planet.

Soon they begin travelling around the galaxy; they get captured by Vogans (beuracratic and unfealing green behemoths); travel on a ship that has a tendency to do things that are very improbably; talk with a manically depressed robot; watch as planets are being built by a race of people who build planets; continue getting chased by the Vogans; find the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything; break Arthur's love interest out of prison and so on.

So what's wrong with it? Well, that might be a little difficult to explain, but as far as I can figure, the addition of a tangible goal for each character makes the movie lose some of the books charm. Arthur is wildly in love with Trillian (a girl that he met on Earth, who now happens to be travelling through space with egomaniac Zaphod Beeblebrox (sp)), but she kind of ignores him and puts on the waterworks when she finds out Earth was destroyed. Zaphod is portrayed as more of a bumbling fool than he was in either the mini-series or the book. Arthur Dent (who is surprisingly well played by Mos Def) just wants to find a good party.

So now that Arthus has a tangible goal: to woo Trillian, the movie's plot is centered around that, providing climaxes, ups and downs and so on, where there were originally none, just quirky things about the universe. The movie also creates an ending where there was no ending before, but then right at the end provides an outlet for a sequal (The Restaurant at the end of the Universe).

Past the qualms with the plot, the movie looks good, it really does. The planet construction floor is breathtakingly vast, the Vogans look like real 'things,' Earth's implosion (it wasn't an explosion) looks rather amazing, John Malkovich looks downright creepy with his spider legs and so on. Unfortunately, these effects are caught within the Hollywoodized plot and for me and for many other fans it was a little dissapointing. The movie is however worth seeing, both by fans of the books and mini-series and byt people who have never heard the name Douglas Adams before.

Before I saw this, I had heard alot of bad things about it. I have read the book many, many times, and was a little worried about watching it. I finally got to see it right before it left the theatre and I have seen it about a billion times after that. I don't know what everybody was expecting. It is insane to think that a movie can be just like the book. The book is so full of subtle humor, there is no way that they could translate that into a movie format. I think that the movie caught the spirit of the book extremely well. It is the fun ridiculous universe that Douglas Adams introduced me to. If you are looking for something fun to watch, especially if you like british humor, you will love this movie. And if you are a lover of the book, don't shut it out just because it didn't live up to "what you would have done". Accept it as the classic commedy that it is. It was definately on my list of things to buy for my new blu-ray.

Englishman Arthur Dent wakes up one morning to find his house is scheduled for immediate demolition to make way for an express bypass. This is small potatoes, however, as a short while later he is saved from the destruction of the entire planet by his best friend, who reveals that he is actually an alien from another star system. A short while later than that, they find themselves roaming the universe with an incompetent galactic president, a depressed robot, and a woman Arthur once tried to pick up at a party. There is a kidnapping subplot, a romance, and... oh, look, it's not really important. It's just dressing for an uproarious satire of the human condition...which is completely glossed over, rushed through and lost in this lifeless adaptation.

For one example, there's a bit in the novel where Arthur describes the ludicrously convoluted and injurious process he had to go through to see the plans for the bypass that were supposedly "on display." In the film, he simply says, "In a cellar!"

Ba-dump-psh...thud.

All the lines that were kept intact were delivered far better in the 1981 television miniseries. Likewise the animated Guide sequences, which are pathetically uninspired here. The cast, which sounded great on paper, simply can't carry the material. This new version is absolutely dismal in comparison, in every way.

I don't think viewers new to the story will have a better experience. The storytelling is so poorly executed that it will probably go over their heads completely.

I was amazed by this film -- amazed that one of the funniest books ever written could be transformed into such an unfunny, dull motion picture. Nobody in the theatre laughed. My mom fell asleep. It's true, my mom falls asleep during most movies but I don't, and I came close. Skip this and rent the BBC TV adaptation, which is completely hilarious, not to mention coherent.