*** (out of ****)
Starring Sam Rockwell, Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, Warwick Davis, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich
Directed by Garth Jennings, from the novels by Douglas Adams
2005
120 min PG
The new adaptation of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a jumble of good ideas and a narrative mess, in which characters are introduced and underused, and storythreads are started up without ever being resolved. Maybe there’s going to be a sequel. Too much is conveyed in narration and confusing bursts of dialogue, and the movie at once barrels along uncontrollably while missing any real forward momentum. It reduces to mere parody the satire of the novels by Douglas Adams upon which it is based. Adams purists will complain about what’s missing while those who have never read a word of his will probably just wonder what’s going on. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that, popcorn parody though it may be, “Hitchhiker’s” is at least a fun, whimsical, and cheerful popcorn parody. The target of the parody are overblown big budget sci-fi adventures and FX spectacles, which tend to take themselves awfully seriously. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” on the other hand, is like “Ocean’s Twelve” in outer space. Our bungling heroes are always muttering things under their breath, dressed in pajamas, confused about how their spaceship works, and making comments like “who are we rescuing again?”
Like the object of its parody, “Hitchhiker’s” is a special effects bonanza, but it brings to mind the FX bonanzas of Terry Gilliam, like “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” or “Time Bandits,” in which huge amounts of money are thrown around for silly ends. The chief aliens in “Hitchhiker’s” are, refreshingly, not made on a computer, but made by those wizards at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. They are bent-backed bureaucrats, waddling along in cardigans and neckties, bellowing “resistance is useless!” while filing tax forms. After so many pompous, empty spectacles like “Gladiator,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Lord of the Rings,” “The Polar Express,” and probably “Kingdom of Heaven” opening in a few days, it’s nice to see all the powers of technology given a chance to let their hair down.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” follows the plight of an ordinary man named Arthur Dent, saved from the planet Earth only moments before its destruction at the hands of a race called the Vogons. Do the Vogons need to destroy the Earth lest our nuclear capabilities became too great, or in order to conquer the galaxy? No, they destroy the Earth in order to build an interstellar bypass, and their paperwork says that they have to. It’s only a matter of time before our hapless Earthman is gallivanting across the cosmos, in and out of all manner of goofy dangers. He is joined by an old girlfriend, two human-looking aliens (one off-kilter but polite, and the other magnificently obnoxious), a depressed robot, and a stolen experimental spaceship.
In hot pursuit are the powers of the galactic bureaucracy, out for their spaceship. The mission of our heroes is nothing less than the question of life, the universe, and everything. They already know the answer (it’s 42), but it makes no sense without the proper question. Arthur and his companions cross paths with the Vogons several times, either at gunpoint or having to wait in line to fill out paperwork on the Vogon homeworld. How, exactly, all this kind-of sort-of makes sense I’ll leave for the movie to explain. Needless to say, our hapless Earthman Arthur is not so much interested in uncovering the riddle of the cosmos as he is resigned to not understanding anything that’s happening to him and desperate for a good cup of tea.
What little sense “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” makes is occasionally provided by the politer of the human-looking aliens, but mostly by an electronic book he gives to our poor Arthur. It is the Guide of the title, voiced by no less than Stephen Fry (“Gosford Park”), a man so dry and English that he actually played the butler Jeeves in “Jeeves and Wooster” on BBC. Patiently, and with only the slightest hint of irony, he explains to us tidbits of impossible technology, pieces of bad science, and the habits of some of the species met by our heroes. In fact, the movie (like the 1981 BBC adaptation) is framed more as being about the Guide itself, and uses the plight of humanity as an illustration of the Guide’s usefulness. This is perhaps the only sane way we could be introduced, in a scant 90 minutes, to the universe Adams has created, which is both byzantine and insane.
Arthur’s adventure is a combination of great sights and throwaway visual gags. We are awed by the faceless grey buildings that line the Vogon homeworld, then laugh when we discover so many of them are filled with waiting areas for people to file petty paperwork. (“Have a good day,” one of the Vogons says apologetically after she learns our hero’s girl is sentenced to be eaten.) The lifepod that comes out of the stolen spaceship is clean, spherical, and contains just enough room for our heroes to bicker over who gets to use the tiny steering wheel and what the buttons do. The mammoth supercomputer that finds the answer to life, the universe, and everything (in 7.5 million years) looks like it’s sitting with its giant blockhead in its hands. When arguing over how their super-sleek spacecraft works, characters reduce “The Infinite Improbability Drive” to “The Big Button.”
“Hitchhiker’s” highpoint is the parallel dimension where custom-built planets are shaped: the entirety of Earth Mark II is contained in a single, massive chamber, floating next to ringed worlds and gas giants. The oceans are being filled by hose and the mountains painted by hand. In the offices of the planet building factory, we see wild models for cube and diamond-shaped planets. We listen to a planet-builder discussing how he specializes in doing shores and fjords, and how he got an award for all the “fiddly bits on the edges of Norway.”
Page two of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Back to home.