Film review - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Chris Casino
Created | Updated Apr 30, 2005
Cross-posted from The Douglas Adams Continuum Forum:
Film Review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Former H2G2 scholar MJ Simpson recently posted an extremely long, slanderous review of this film. I shall not use this document to take any shots at the man, but I will use it to rebut or enhance his arguments.
Let me start out by saying for all the arguing and commotion this picture caused, I enjoyed the movie, and I would see it again like a shot, and the DVD will end up on my shelf September 5’th 2005. It isn’t perfect, by any means, and I never expected it to be – It’s Hitchhiker’s Guide, not Casablanca!
Is it the movie I expected? No. But did I take that into consideration so I would be open-minded? Yes. And did that help? Yes.
MJ claims in his review that Martin “Tim from The Office” Freeman played Arthur Dent as an “annoying little prat”. I did not see an annoying little prat. I saw a much less posh, but still mild-mannered everyman who was a little more aware of his surroundings, but still convincing, because I believed his plight. I used to think Martin sucked because he got the role over my personal favorite, Jack Davenport, but now having seen him, I dare say he works a lot better than Jack would have. Jack is a very similar actor to Simon Jones, the original Arthur, which would have been boring, and Martin is a very different actor to Simon Jones, which he said himself. It’s not Simon Jones, but it’s still Arthur Dent, just more accessible, middle-class working Joe, and that works for me. Kudos to you, Martin!
As far as Mos Def as Ford Prefect – I was more vocal about him than anybody else in the cast because nobody gave a good reason why an alien could not be black. And I was a tad bit worried because I admit in some of the clips we’ve seen, some of his reading fell a bit flat, as it still did, but surprisingly, he made me laugh and he grew on me considerably. The interesting thing about Ford was, in all the other versions, it was implied that he thought cars were the dominant life form but in the movie, when he comes right out and says it to Arthur.
“Remember how we met?” he asks.
They then flash back to Ford sticking his hand out at an incoming car. Arthur passes by on the other side of the street and gets him out of the way.
“I thought cars were the dominant life form.” He says.
Now as any fan who’s spoken to me can tell you, I was worried Arthur and Ford weren’t going to be friends in the movie because there was a non-Douglas Adams draft where Ford only took Arthur along because of the life-saving bit, and Ford later tried to ditch Arthur. This bit got me so incensed that it was to the point where all the rest of the stuff they could have done whatever they wanted with, as long as Arthur and Ford were friends. Well, they are.
The only problem with Ford Prefect in the film is that there should be more of him, but that can perhaps be attributed to the fact that unlike all of the other versions, the movie moves really fast. And for the record, even if I had disliked Mos Def as Ford, I still wouldn’t have understood why the hell he shouldn’t have been given the chance.
Ford is a bit different, because the alien aspects of his character are played up a lot more. It seems like his Ford isn’t even trying to fit in (he calls Mr. Prosser’s workers “People of Earth”), but as far as I’m concerned he was never supposed to. People said that Mos was too deadpan and that Ford wasn’t cool enough. Well, the original Ford, Geoffrey McGivern, was pretty deadpan and left the cool stuff up to Zaphod, which Mos seems to do here. It works for me.
As far as the rest of the performers, Sam Rockwell plays a very charismatic, cool Zaphod, although I dare say the shit for brains politician bit is played up a wee bit too much (that’s probably what made MJ Simpson say Zaphod was practically unrecognizable). All in all, however, Zaphod is a character in the movie you’ll love or hate, and I liked him a lot, as I had a gut feeling I would.
And what, you may ask, about the second head and third arm? Well, the second head is essentially Zaphod’s more evil half. For all the bumbling Zaphod does, the second head is even worse, because it’s the part of his brain where all the most volatile parts of his personality are. He hid the second half of his brain in the other head because no President is allowed to have a whole brain since a President’s job is only to draw attention from wielding power. The third arm is there, but only once.
And Scratch here on the forum said it was fair to say that about Sam as long as I didn’t tell him Zooey Deschanel was anything other than wooden and unconvincing. Well, Scratch isn’t going to like this, but this is another case of liking a performer a lot more than I thought I would. In the clips I saw of her, Zooey really annoyed me (“We’re on a spaceship, Arthur!”) but when I saw her on-screen for myself, I thought she was a very good Trillian, much less of a token chick, much more emphasis on her being a genius, and she worked very well with Arthur.
Ah, yes, that brings me to the love story between Arthur and Trillian. Well, I know this will get a lot of gasps amongst fans who dislike it, but I actually had no problem with Arthur and Trillian’s romance in the movie. It was always there, Douglas Adams just never played it up. In this version, however, it drives the essential story along, as Arthur’s whole motivation is trying to get with Trillian and he does. For many it was a bit too Hollywood and maybe it was, but for me it worked. Plus, Arthur and Zaphod always had a naturally adversarial relationship and I always got the feeling it had to do with resentment on Arthur’s part, as it most definitely (no pun intended) does in this movie. Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell play against each other perfectly. Arthur is not an asexual person, and since he gets his house knocked down at lunch time, his planet blown up a short time later and is thrown into space about an hour later, it’s not so terrible, in my opinion, that co-writers Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick threw the man a bone. The only thing I have against the love story is I hope they tone it down a notch if there’s a sequel so they can play up the Arthur-Ford buddy aspects a little more, especially since Martin and Mos seemed very good together so I begged for them to play it up more.
What Arthur does wrong in this scene is he’s doing terrific with Trillian, but she tells him, “Let’s go to Madagascar.” And he says he can’t because he has a job. She sees he has no adventure in him and he needs to get some in him to have her. That drives the story.
I also think having the party they meet up at be a week or so earlier is better because it gives Arthur a better excuse to wake up hungover in the morning. I lost the love of my life like he does a year and a half ago and the only thing that kept me from waking up hungover every morning was that I never touch alcohol (wah-wah-wah!). They’re actually a pretty good foursome and I hope they all return if there’s a sequel.
Despite the fact that he’s not as old as Richard Vernon, Bill Nighy is absolutely wonderful as the Magrathean coastline designer, Slartibartfast, and brings a terribly believable pathos to his role. Slarti was always a nice sad old man, as Douglas Adams once said, but Bill Nighy plays him as a nice, sad middle aged man. Still, though, he is terrific and also works very well with Arthur, probably because he’s worked with Martin a few times before. Bill’s Slarti makes you want to hug him and tell him he can design as many fjords as he wants.
MJ Simpson said of him, “Marvin may as well not be there because all of his lines have either been changed or shortened.” Well, Marvin helps them out a lot in one particular scene at the end, which I shall not spoil, and most of the lines he spoke were exactly how I remembered them. Likewise, I’d heard Alan Rickman, one of the greatest actors who ever walked planet Earth, sounded too sarcastic, but I thought since I’d heard his casting announced that he had the perfect tone with which to voice a depressed robot, and I still do. I found Marvin to be very funny.
Now, on to the new stuff:
Humma Kavula: Humma Kavula is Zaphod Beeblebrox’s former opponent in the Galactic Presidential Election, the Kennedy to his Nixon. He is now an intergalactic Billy Graham who preaches to his worshippers the theory of the Great Green Arkleseizure which sneezed the entire Universe out of his nose. When Zaphod visits him on Viltvodle Six, he agrees to fetch Deep Thought's Point-of-View gun for him in exchange for the coordinates to Magrathea.
John Malkovich plays Humma Kavula, and he’s the best possible actor they could have gotten to play the role because he’s on the borderline of going over the top but he still managed to scare the hell out of me. I’d say that’s the mark of a truly skilled actor.
Zaphod’s Vice-President Questular Rontok – She’s trailing Zaphod with the Vogons, whom she convinces that Trillian has kidnapped Zaphod, because she has a secret crush on him. I didn’t really understand her and I don’t understand how Zaphod seemed to end up with her at the end – when I first saw Anna Chancellor as Questular, she made me think she should be sending the Vogons out to hunt Moose and Squirrel. If Questular returns for the sequel, I can only hope she’s dolled up a bit, otherwise having her as Zaphod’s girlfriend will make no sense.
The Point-of-View Gun – A very interesting device. When Zaphod first fires it, he fires it at Ford, which Mos Def plays perfectly as he moves around manically and is forced for a few seconds to act as stupid as his semi-cousin. Take it from me, folks, you gotta see that on the big screen, it’s hilarious!
Some people have asked what does Humma Kavula want with this Point-of-View gun? Well, I have a feeling they deliberately left this one unanswered for potential sequel purposes, where it will be cleared up. I hope.
Coming out of the theater today, I overheard a guy say, “It didn’t end like the book at all.” And I was prepared to get defensive and say, “That’s because the first book didn’t really have an ending, you moron!” But I held back because it wasn’t worth it. If this guy’s point had been that the ending, which I shall not spoil, is not as anti-climatic as the ending to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the book that actually has the ending, I could understand that, but his point was that something wasn’t literally taken from the book, and I chose to write that off because it’s not valid.
The only problem I had with this movie is that whereas the other audio/visual versions went at their own pace, this one moves so fast, you blink and it’s over. That’s wise as if it was too long people will get disinterested, but I don’t think an extra twenty minutes or so would have hurt. But the stuff I would have put in those extra twenty minutes will probably be in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Again, I hope!
In closing, as I said, this is not the movie I had in mind, and it is not a movie everyone will like, but a lot of people will, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A lot of Douglas’ words have been changed, but his voice is still there. And I praise everybody involved for this, and I am now off to call Garkbit to make a reservation for a table at Milliways!
One final note: I went to see the movie with my friend Brian Harmon. He didn’t know the story but when Mos Def was cast, he praised him to me, as he’s a huge hip-hop fan. As I told him about Ford Prefect, he told me Mos Def would do fine in that. I was a bit concerned that he wouldn’t be able to follow it as a lot of non fans can’t. I was even more concerned during points when I’d be laughing my ass off and he’d be sitting there watching it. When we came out of the theater, however, he said, “That was funny as hell!” He also remarked how Malkovich was a very good actor for his particular role. We both discussed how funny Mos Def was, and he said, “That was funny as hell, when he came down with that shopping cart with beer and peanuts and when he stuck his hand out in front of that car.” And we talked about the potential sequel. Just as I got out of the car to go to my front door, he said to me, “Chris, thank you for introducing me to that movie, man that was great!”
Sometimes you worry for nothing.
***1/2 stars out of ****
Film Review of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Former H2G2 scholar MJ Simpson recently posted an extremely long, slanderous review of this film. I shall not use this document to take any shots at the man, but I will use it to rebut or enhance his arguments.
Let me start out by saying for all the arguing and commotion this picture caused, I enjoyed the movie, and I would see it again like a shot, and the DVD will end up on my shelf September 5’th 2005. It isn’t perfect, by any means, and I never expected it to be – It’s Hitchhiker’s Guide, not Casablanca!
Is it the movie I expected? No. But did I take that into consideration so I would be open-minded? Yes. And did that help? Yes.
MJ claims in his review that Martin “Tim from The Office” Freeman played Arthur Dent as an “annoying little prat”. I did not see an annoying little prat. I saw a much less posh, but still mild-mannered everyman who was a little more aware of his surroundings, but still convincing, because I believed his plight. I used to think Martin sucked because he got the role over my personal favorite, Jack Davenport, but now having seen him, I dare say he works a lot better than Jack would have. Jack is a very similar actor to Simon Jones, the original Arthur, which would have been boring, and Martin is a very different actor to Simon Jones, which he said himself. It’s not Simon Jones, but it’s still Arthur Dent, just more accessible, middle-class working Joe, and that works for me. Kudos to you, Martin!
As far as Mos Def as Ford Prefect – I was more vocal about him than anybody else in the cast because nobody gave a good reason why an alien could not be black. And I was a tad bit worried because I admit in some of the clips we’ve seen, some of his reading fell a bit flat, as it still did, but surprisingly, he made me laugh and he grew on me considerably. The interesting thing about Ford was, in all the other versions, it was implied that he thought cars were the dominant life form but in the movie, when he comes right out and says it to Arthur.
“Remember how we met?” he asks.
They then flash back to Ford sticking his hand out at an incoming car. Arthur passes by on the other side of the street and gets him out of the way.
“I thought cars were the dominant life form.” He says.
Now as any fan who’s spoken to me can tell you, I was worried Arthur and Ford weren’t going to be friends in the movie because there was a non-Douglas Adams draft where Ford only took Arthur along because of the life-saving bit, and Ford later tried to ditch Arthur. This bit got me so incensed that it was to the point where all the rest of the stuff they could have done whatever they wanted with, as long as Arthur and Ford were friends. Well, they are.
The only problem with Ford Prefect in the film is that there should be more of him, but that can perhaps be attributed to the fact that unlike all of the other versions, the movie moves really fast. And for the record, even if I had disliked Mos Def as Ford, I still wouldn’t have understood why the hell he shouldn’t have been given the chance.
Ford is a bit different, because the alien aspects of his character are played up a lot more. It seems like his Ford isn’t even trying to fit in (he calls Mr. Prosser’s workers “People of Earth”), but as far as I’m concerned he was never supposed to. People said that Mos was too deadpan and that Ford wasn’t cool enough. Well, the original Ford, Geoffrey McGivern, was pretty deadpan and left the cool stuff up to Zaphod, which Mos seems to do here. It works for me.
As far as the rest of the performers, Sam Rockwell plays a very charismatic, cool Zaphod, although I dare say the shit for brains politician bit is played up a wee bit too much (that’s probably what made MJ Simpson say Zaphod was practically unrecognizable). All in all, however, Zaphod is a character in the movie you’ll love or hate, and I liked him a lot, as I had a gut feeling I would.
And what, you may ask, about the second head and third arm? Well, the second head is essentially Zaphod’s more evil half. For all the bumbling Zaphod does, the second head is even worse, because it’s the part of his brain where all the most volatile parts of his personality are. He hid the second half of his brain in the other head because no President is allowed to have a whole brain since a President’s job is only to draw attention from wielding power. The third arm is there, but only once.
And Scratch here on the forum said it was fair to say that about Sam as long as I didn’t tell him Zooey Deschanel was anything other than wooden and unconvincing. Well, Scratch isn’t going to like this, but this is another case of liking a performer a lot more than I thought I would. In the clips I saw of her, Zooey really annoyed me (“We’re on a spaceship, Arthur!”) but when I saw her on-screen for myself, I thought she was a very good Trillian, much less of a token chick, much more emphasis on her being a genius, and she worked very well with Arthur.
Ah, yes, that brings me to the love story between Arthur and Trillian. Well, I know this will get a lot of gasps amongst fans who dislike it, but I actually had no problem with Arthur and Trillian’s romance in the movie. It was always there, Douglas Adams just never played it up. In this version, however, it drives the essential story along, as Arthur’s whole motivation is trying to get with Trillian and he does. For many it was a bit too Hollywood and maybe it was, but for me it worked. Plus, Arthur and Zaphod always had a naturally adversarial relationship and I always got the feeling it had to do with resentment on Arthur’s part, as it most definitely (no pun intended) does in this movie. Martin Freeman and Sam Rockwell play against each other perfectly. Arthur is not an asexual person, and since he gets his house knocked down at lunch time, his planet blown up a short time later and is thrown into space about an hour later, it’s not so terrible, in my opinion, that co-writers Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick threw the man a bone. The only thing I have against the love story is I hope they tone it down a notch if there’s a sequel so they can play up the Arthur-Ford buddy aspects a little more, especially since Martin and Mos seemed very good together so I begged for them to play it up more.
What Arthur does wrong in this scene is he’s doing terrific with Trillian, but she tells him, “Let’s go to Madagascar.” And he says he can’t because he has a job. She sees he has no adventure in him and he needs to get some in him to have her. That drives the story.
I also think having the party they meet up at be a week or so earlier is better because it gives Arthur a better excuse to wake up hungover in the morning. I lost the love of my life like he does a year and a half ago and the only thing that kept me from waking up hungover every morning was that I never touch alcohol (wah-wah-wah!). They’re actually a pretty good foursome and I hope they all return if there’s a sequel.
Despite the fact that he’s not as old as Richard Vernon, Bill Nighy is absolutely wonderful as the Magrathean coastline designer, Slartibartfast, and brings a terribly believable pathos to his role. Slarti was always a nice sad old man, as Douglas Adams once said, but Bill Nighy plays him as a nice, sad middle aged man. Still, though, he is terrific and also works very well with Arthur, probably because he’s worked with Martin a few times before. Bill’s Slarti makes you want to hug him and tell him he can design as many fjords as he wants.
MJ Simpson said of him, “Marvin may as well not be there because all of his lines have either been changed or shortened.” Well, Marvin helps them out a lot in one particular scene at the end, which I shall not spoil, and most of the lines he spoke were exactly how I remembered them. Likewise, I’d heard Alan Rickman, one of the greatest actors who ever walked planet Earth, sounded too sarcastic, but I thought since I’d heard his casting announced that he had the perfect tone with which to voice a depressed robot, and I still do. I found Marvin to be very funny.
Now, on to the new stuff:
Humma Kavula: Humma Kavula is Zaphod Beeblebrox’s former opponent in the Galactic Presidential Election, the Kennedy to his Nixon. He is now an intergalactic Billy Graham who preaches to his worshippers the theory of the Great Green Arkleseizure which sneezed the entire Universe out of his nose. When Zaphod visits him on Viltvodle Six, he agrees to fetch Deep Thought's Point-of-View gun for him in exchange for the coordinates to Magrathea.
John Malkovich plays Humma Kavula, and he’s the best possible actor they could have gotten to play the role because he’s on the borderline of going over the top but he still managed to scare the hell out of me. I’d say that’s the mark of a truly skilled actor.
Zaphod’s Vice-President Questular Rontok – She’s trailing Zaphod with the Vogons, whom she convinces that Trillian has kidnapped Zaphod, because she has a secret crush on him. I didn’t really understand her and I don’t understand how Zaphod seemed to end up with her at the end – when I first saw Anna Chancellor as Questular, she made me think she should be sending the Vogons out to hunt Moose and Squirrel. If Questular returns for the sequel, I can only hope she’s dolled up a bit, otherwise having her as Zaphod’s girlfriend will make no sense.
The Point-of-View Gun – A very interesting device. When Zaphod first fires it, he fires it at Ford, which Mos Def plays perfectly as he moves around manically and is forced for a few seconds to act as stupid as his semi-cousin. Take it from me, folks, you gotta see that on the big screen, it’s hilarious!
Some people have asked what does Humma Kavula want with this Point-of-View gun? Well, I have a feeling they deliberately left this one unanswered for potential sequel purposes, where it will be cleared up. I hope.
Coming out of the theater today, I overheard a guy say, “It didn’t end like the book at all.” And I was prepared to get defensive and say, “That’s because the first book didn’t really have an ending, you moron!” But I held back because it wasn’t worth it. If this guy’s point had been that the ending, which I shall not spoil, is not as anti-climatic as the ending to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the book that actually has the ending, I could understand that, but his point was that something wasn’t literally taken from the book, and I chose to write that off because it’s not valid.
The only problem I had with this movie is that whereas the other audio/visual versions went at their own pace, this one moves so fast, you blink and it’s over. That’s wise as if it was too long people will get disinterested, but I don’t think an extra twenty minutes or so would have hurt. But the stuff I would have put in those extra twenty minutes will probably be in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Again, I hope!
In closing, as I said, this is not the movie I had in mind, and it is not a movie everyone will like, but a lot of people will, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A lot of Douglas’ words have been changed, but his voice is still there. And I praise everybody involved for this, and I am now off to call Garkbit to make a reservation for a table at Milliways!
One final note: I went to see the movie with my friend Brian Harmon. He didn’t know the story but when Mos Def was cast, he praised him to me, as he’s a huge hip-hop fan. As I told him about Ford Prefect, he told me Mos Def would do fine in that. I was a bit concerned that he wouldn’t be able to follow it as a lot of non fans can’t. I was even more concerned during points when I’d be laughing my ass off and he’d be sitting there watching it. When we came out of the theater, however, he said, “That was funny as hell!” He also remarked how Malkovich was a very good actor for his particular role. We both discussed how funny Mos Def was, and he said, “That was funny as hell, when he came down with that shopping cart with beer and peanuts and when he stuck his hand out in front of that car.” And we talked about the potential sequel. Just as I got out of the car to go to my front door, he said to me, “Chris, thank you for introducing me to that movie, man that was great!”
Sometimes you worry for nothing.
***1/2 stars out of ****
