Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy uneven, but fun

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the
unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm
of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow
sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly
98 million miles is an utterly insignificant
little blue-green planet whose ape-descended
life forms are so amazingly primitive that
they still think digital watches are a pretty
neat idea.”

So begins the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy” and many a junior high schooler and
comic book store guy has quoted, guffawed and
shared these clever words featured in print,
radio and TV for the better part of 30 years.
It was a series destined for the big screen
20 years ago, why it took until 2005 to get
there is a mystery.

Here’s what the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy” has to say about film adaptations.
Movies based on books, radio programs and
television shows are predetermined to deviate
significantly from their source material. It is
widely believed that it would be impossible to
accurately reproduce a great work of literary
comedy with any exactitude, so why not just scrap
the original and do a movie “based on” it with
some gratuitous violence and sight gags thrown
in to boot.

It’s a rationalization mostly. Most studios
operate on the lowest common denominator principle
of filmmaking, which states that no matter how
successful or great a book might be, it is either
too simple or too complex for the silver screen
and must be touched up. This allows them to throw
a gun, some explosions, a bit of romance, a few
moral lessons and a lot of action into an otherwise
great work of pop philosophy.
Well, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is in
theaters now and in spite of some very obvious
messing about with Douglas Adams brilliant original
script, it manages to capture the essence of the
book and TV version quite well. Now, in the world
I inhabit, which is filled with sci fi geeks, gamers
and bookworms, HHGTTG is a classic trilogy (of six
or seven books) that everyone knows and read several
times.
In the real world, a great many normal people have
probably never heard of Douglas Adams, his books or
his genius. That doesn’t mean they aren’t well read,
it just means they probably aren’t anglophiles, PBS
snobs or geeks. This book fits right in with the D&D
crowd, Monty Python and Dr. Who.

HHGTTG is the story of a very English Earthman named
Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman “The Office,” “Love
Actually,” “Shaun of the Dead”) who is suddenly taken
out of his very comfortable world by the destruction
of said world. Dent finds himself out in a big galaxy
where everything is much weirder than it is on Earth,
but much funnier as well.

Arthur Dent is immediately picked up by the President
of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, who has just kidnapped
himself as is being violently pursued for his own
protection by the Vogons, an unpleasant race of
creatures and the Galaxy’s petty bureaucrats.

Zaphod is traveling with Trillian, a girl Arthur
once met a party and failed miserably to get on
with. Zaphod picked her up deftly with a classic
line, “Is this guy boring you? Why don’t you come
with me, I’m from a different planet?” Zaphod
flies the spaceship Heart of Gold, powered by an
improbability drive, which he stole while kidnapping
himself. Now he’s looking for the legendary planet
Magrathea where the ultimate question to life, the
universe and everything can be found. The answer
is 42, but it doesn’t mean anything because no one
knows the question.
Now, the thing about the books and TV shows that
made this film possible, is that the plot was
pretty simple and nothing was sacred or taken
seriously for long if it was. All is folly; life
is wonderful if we don’t get too morbid, so let’s
have a bit of fun. That’s what HHGTTG is really
all about.

Mostly, these characters just got into a great
many situations where the talking about things
was the most entertaining aspect. Why build a
robot with a brain the size of a planet if all
you have him do is fetch people and things? Are
digital watches really all that fascinating?
When you think about it, aren’t dolphins really
the smartest creatures on Earth?

The film takes a different route than Adams would
have taken if he hadn’t died, much to everyone’s
dismay including his own, in 2001. This script
had the one thing Douglas Adams didn’t need: help
from another screenwriter. In this case, that
screenwriter is Karey Kirkpatrick, auteur of
such gem classics as “The Little Vampire,” “Honey,
We Shrunk Ourselves” and “Chicken Run.” Granted,
these are all fine films brilliantly written and
executed, but Kirkpatrick’s additions to HHGTTG
add nothing and distract greatly from Adam’s
dialogue. One need not be a linguist to notice
the palpable difference between Adams’ rich
dialogue and Kirkpatrick’s flatter than flat blurbs.

Luckily, 60 percent of HHGTTG is not only the original
Adams script, it is brilliantly performed with
loving attention by some of today’s finest British
comedic actors (Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren,
Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Steve Pemberton)
as well as a good number of American actors
who really seem to get it (John Malkovich,
Mos Def, Sam Rockwell and Jason Schwartzman).

Just as “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy depended
on its massive cult following for its success,
HHGTTG is going to be a make or break proposition
based on the countless fans of the original who
will either be delighted by the adaptation or
appalled by every little change. To most of them,
this film will be about a B+.

For the average Joe, HHGTTG is a mild and chaotic
romp of uneven scenes based on some kind of inside
joke they weren’t privy to in the first place. They
will find the comedy weird and alien, kind of cute
in places with a satisfying Hollywood ending.