Stay out of this 'Galaxy'
The Americanization of this sci-fi satire is flawed from start to finish.
By STEVE PERSALL
Published April 28, 2005
I have no problem with Vogons blasting Earth to bits, if they'll destroy the monstrosity that is Garth Jennings' movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
What a garish, poorly paced, nonsensical pile of intergalactic garbage. If anything, Jennings proves dolphins are truly smarter than humans, since they "sing" the theme song - a bit of Pythonesque humor that amused me - then float out of the movie. Come to think of it: The only other character that grabbed me was a flying whale harpooned by an Infinite Probability Missile. I could have left the theater afterward.
So long, and thanks for all the water mammals.
If you aren't familiar with the late Douglas Adams' sci-fi satire, this movie will do absolutely nothing to encourage reading it. Foundational jokes are strip-mined to dust, characters change entirely for the worst, and the bargain basement design of outer space that made the British TV version appealing is now CGI chic. Only the guide, presented as a cleverly illustrated life handbook, captures Adams' wry slant on human nature. But even the guide is thinner than before, like everything else in the movie.
The outline is intact: Arthur Dent (played by bland Martin Freeman) is fighting developers tearing down his house to build a freeway. Little does he know that the Vogons will destroy Earth in minutes to make room for an intergalactic freeway. Arthur's best friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) knows, since he's an alien. Ford grabs Arthur and hitches a ride on the Vogon spaceship just before the world ends.
Armed with the guide, Ford leads Arthur through space travels that, in Adams' prose, revealed the awkwardness of human intelligence. The late author was an expert in the sort of digressive humor marking much of British comedy. A strange situation would lead to an earthly correlation where the punchlines awaited. Jennings simply shows the weird stuff while shedding much of Adams' drollness that likely wouldn't appeal to American masses.
The Americanization of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is Jennings' worst move. Casting the fine actors Def, Zooey Deschanel and John Malkovich are half-hearted plays for Yank interest. Many of Adams' nonsequiturs are jettisoned simply because they wouldn't work without singularly British inflections.
A romantic triangle suggested in the book is now a central theme because those sell tickets. Everything adorably clunky before has been streamlined. Nothing except Stephen Fry's cheerily bleak narration of the guide's cheeky wisdom reflects Adams' style.
Jennings creates a clumsy medley of Adams' fondly recalled ideas: a towel is the best tool anywhere, silly dance greetings, Point of View guns, Infinite Probability and the universe's ultimate answer (42), if you figure out what the question is. We get characters remembered, but not like this.
For example: Sam Rockwell's canned ham performance as Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the universe. The proper preening and nitwit authority is there, but Zaphod's quirk of having two heads (a wax dummy appendage on TV) is now something like a manic Pez dispenser. Jennings knows it's stupid because he arranges to have the inner head decapitated, thus eliminating Zaphod's cleverly foolish signature without respect for the source. That head symbolizes everything Jennings does wrong.
Some Adams fans will call these complaints heresy, deluded by devotion to the way other artistic mediums addressed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They expect the magic to continue. Isn't perfection infallible?
Not when the playing field and rules change so drastically. Forget the advice emblazoned on the guide's cover. It's time to panic.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyGrade: D-
Director: Garth Jennings
Cast: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Warwick Davis, voices of Alan Rickman, Helen Mirren and Stephen Fry
Screenplay: Douglas Adams, Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the novel by Adams
Rating: PG; mild violence and profanity, mature themes
Running time: 108 min.