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THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY/ Malcontent's Mark: A-

With Monty Python’s Spamalot a huge success on Broadway, it would come as no surprise that the new movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy will garner a similar cultish loyalty.  There’s already a built-in audience for Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker's Guide five-book series, which includes the 1981 BBC miniseries and the 1984 videogame.  Though Hollywood has appended a narrative arc to Adams’ merrily subversive sci-fi satire, the film still zings with the witty irreverence and zaniness desperately needed in today's multiplexes. 

Remaining mostly true to the novel, we are introduced to Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) on an unlucky day.  Not only are bulldozers parked in his front yard, threatening to raze his home to make way for a highway, but spaceships have also gathered around Earth to demolish the planet for a hyperspace freeway.  Fortunately for Dent, his friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) is not of this earth, and knows how to thumb rides, the intergalactic way.  The two are whisked off the planet just in time. 

Now, we’ve seen planets blow up in movies many times before, yet this is the first time the world ends in a way T.S. Eliot would have appreciated, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Prefect and Dent board an enemy ship, where they suffer through a poetry reading by interstellar bureaucrats, and are then jettisoned into space.  After floating in space for a few moments, they are picked up by the Heart of Gold spaceship, stolen by President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox.  The spaceship has an Infinite Improbability Drive, which has the power to turn two nuclear missiles into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale. 

If you are already lost, don’t resist - it’s all part of the fun.

You’re probably guessing Hitchhiker's Guide is an overly-animated CGI space spectacle.  Guess again.  When most filmmakers resort to CGI for space creatures, director Garth Jennings – with a flair resembling Spike Jonze - goes old school with assorted aliens created from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.  His minimalist approach goes so far as one scene with the Heart of Gold’s crew transforming into stop-motion yarn versions of themselves.  And the retro sci-fi costumes maximize the comedic effect.  When Marvin the Paranoid Android is on-screen, we happily admire he’s nothing more than a guy in a plastic suit, comically matching the clunky robotic movement a la Battlestar Galactica. 

The writing by Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run) keeps the pace brisk and bouncy.  Though many of the scenes play like Monty Python skits, Hitchhiker's PG humor veers more in cute and cuddly territory, with only a few spots of Pythonesque gallows humor.  The film most resembles Terry Gilliam’s post-Python film Time Bandits.

The cast gamely commits itself to the absurdist proceedings.  Martin Freeman (Shaun of the Dead) is perfectly cast as Dent, the befuddled earthling in his bathrobe.  And they couldn’t possibly have found a better voice choice than Alan Rickman for Marvin; his voice drips with exquisite melancholy.  Mos Def (The Italian Job) displays deft comic timing, and Sam Rockwell - in his second galaxy quest since Galaxy Quest - plays space-guy Beeblebrox as a swinging playboy with a surfer dude's cadences.  The always charming Bill Nighy (Love Actually) has a small, but memorable role as Slartibartfast, a Magrathean planetary construction engineer.  And Zooey Deschanel (Elf), as Dent’s love interest, Trish, proves once again to possess the most luminescent eyes in the galaxy.

Purists may balk at the addition of a love interest to Adams’ tomfoolery, but Hollywood requires a narrative arc.  Personally, I didn’t mind sad-sack Dent’s pinings for Trish, it gave him more to do than look baffled and confused in every scene.  Also, the Brit humor won’t be everyone’s cup of tea – only those who can recite whole scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail will consider Hitchhiker's Guide a near-classic.

Copyright (c) 2005
Bryan Stumpf.
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