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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [2005] Originally a six-part 1978 BBC radio serial, with the last two parts co-written by John Lloyd, Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker franchise then manifested as a play, a record album, more serials, several novels, a TV series and a computer game before entering two and a half decades of development as a 'Hollywood' film. This is what finally emerged, officially adapted from the first novel, which essentially writes up the first four episodes of the serial [and hence has no ending]. The persistence of the project is due to its original excellence in the audio medium, but all subsequent manifestations have represented a falling-off. Like all previous versions of the story, it begins with fallible English clod Arthur Dent [Martin Freeman] in his dressing gown, trying to resist the demolition of his home by officious workmen intent on building an unneeded bypass, only for his friend Ford Prefect [Mos Def] to announce that he's actually an alien on the planet to help research the eponymous book [a theme pared back almost to nothing] and that the Earth is about to be demolished by an officious race of aliens, the Vogons, to make way for an unneeded hyperspace byway. The world is destroyed, but Arthur and Ford hitch a ride with the Vogon fleet and then a ship commandeered by the manic rogue galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox [Sam Rockwell] and an Earth girl, Trillian [Zooey Deschanel], he swept away from Arthur at a party in Islington. The original plot, traces of which remain, has to do with a millennia-long project to come up with 'the ultimate question' [the answer is '42'] to explain the mysteries of 'life, the universe and everything' which has employed the Earth as a living computer and which was about to pay off just before the end of the world. However, in keeping with a script [officially part-authored by the late Adams] that blunts almost every one of Adams' well-turned verbal gags, this business is buried under a typical escape-and-rescue plot which might as well have been used in The Chronicles of Riddick. In a reductive attempt to play in the sticks, ditching even the joke philosophy is ditched to concentrate on a rom-com triangle between the Earth couple and Zaphod, who turns out to be responsible for the destruction of the planet, and a play-it-safe ending which sets everything right again and tries to slingshot off in search of a sequel. Though Rockwell takes a character who is supposed to be irritating
but entertaining into the realms of absolute insufferability and John
Malkovich contributes a bizarrely pointless turn as Zaphod's political
opponent, most of the performances are reasonably-pitched. Freeman,
who has the hardest job, perhaps lack the resentful edge Simon Jones
[who cameos, like several other leftovers from earlier incarnations]
brought to the role but carries the picture well, and there is excellent
voice-work from Stephen Fry [the Book], Alan Rickman [Marvin the Paranoid
Android] and Helen Mirren [the computer Deep Thought]. In many ways,
this is most effective as a big-screen take on traditional space opera
with seamless special effects filling the screen with magazine cover
vistas of huge spaceships, alien landscapes, perfectly-realised grotesque
races [courtesy of Jim Henson's Workshop] and monumental architecture.
Ironically, despite the heavyweight visuals, much of the best character
work is done by players who, as on radio, are unseen - the excellent
retro-sf design of the universe is striking, but there's still a disjunction
between audio and visuals as if this were trying to be the most expensive
illustrated radio play of all time. Cartoony moments, with the cast
transformed into wool puppets by an 'infinite improbability drive',
suggest an area where the film ought to be working a lot harder. Towards
the end, when the story is in danger of collapsing completely and too
much business is starting to feel like Morons From Outer Space,
Bill Nighy turns up as planetary architect Slartibartfast, giving a
performance of such effortless brilliance and absent-minded benevolence
that the whole thing comes briefly into focus, synthesising very British
source material with uber-Hollywood production methods. But it's just
an act - the ending really doesn't work, and Rockwell needs several
more slaps round the heads. Directed by Garth Jennings. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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