SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

hb-60948 I haven't read the series yet, but thought the movie had a number of really funny moments. Gotta say that the blonde dude reminded me of an awesome combo of Owen Wilson and the drummer from The Foo Fighters. They were both so robbed - one of them could've been perfect for that role! Anyhow, I found that the actual overarching plot was not as interesting as the individual moments throughout. Overall, it was pretty good - loved this style of comedy!

aramis-112-804880 Lots of strange terms are slung around by this movie's reviewers, like "Hardcore Hitchchiker Fans" or that some of Adams' ideas are replaced by a "general silliness." Poppycock.I came to HITCHHIKER in college (early 80s), first by the dodgy tv series, then the books, then the kickoff radio series--which is my favorite HH incarnation. Though I collected books, records, tv shows and even the text-based video game (which I wasted hours playing and never won), my favorite part of Adam's ridiculous tour of the galazy is Zaphod's going to the Frogstar, then having the seance with his great-grandfather, then Arthur meeting Lintilla . . . stuff lots of HItchhiker fans who call themselves "hardcore" won't know anything about. Like the "Twin Peaks" fans who thought the Black Lodge was the important thing and loved "The Return" while the original fans who loved the original characters thought it was a travesty. In fact, in its original conception, the radio "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was meant to be, first and foremost, funny. Though because of his extremely tangential connections to "Monty Python" and "The Burkiss Way to Dynamic Living" (for which he penned one of the funniest sketches), Adams' chief influence was the humor writer P. G. Wodehouse, whose books had no other purpose in life but to bring people laugh. As Adams had in the beginning. And this movie has no other purpose but the excite and entertain and bring a few laughs (unfortunately, it places excitement over laughs, which is bad in my book).So, we have radio shows, television shows, books, plays, games, and . . . they're all different! Back in the day, as a young HH fan, when I quickly snapped up the newly published LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING, I hoped to find Lintilla in it. No such luck. All new versions disappoint the truly "hardcore" HH fans.That said, what about this new incarnation of "HItchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? Well, it's amazing. Sam Rockwell is delightful as Zaphod. Mos Def isn't special as Ford, but Ford's purpose is basically exposition; he's never blatantly extraterrestrial apart from his knowledge, and that's Adams' fault. Martin Freeman's Arthur has little to do but look astonished, but think of the culture shock he's going through. Apart from Rockwell's weird and wild Zaphod, Zooey Deschanel is the best part. While not done up in a beautiful package like so many actresses, she brings more to Trillian than we get out of any other incarnation. In the original radio series she has so little to do (apart from bring the mice) she is eliminated from the second radio series without tears or a sense of loss. Zooey is like the woman ordinary Earthling Arthur Dent would fall for. And while her expressions are a bit over-acted for the big screen (even tv big screens, like I saw this movie on) she's the best Trillian yet.And BTW, I love the Vogons.Good things in the movie, without giving away too much: Simon Jones, the original Arthur Dent and the actor most associated with the role, turns in a delightful, if brief, performance as the Magrathean pre-recorded video that warns the Heart of Gold away. I hoped that meant he would be Slartibartfast, but in fact that part is taken by the hilariously uncertain Bill Nighy. It's hard to think of these characters apart from their original actors, but Nighy makes Slartibartfast his own, neither duplicating nor downgrading Richard Vernon in other versions (but the true HITCHHIKER fan keeps all the different versions compartmentalized). Nighy comes in late and injects a humor the movie desperately needs at that point. And the view of Magrathea's planet workshop is truly impressive. It may suffer from the problem other movies had (the first "Star Trek" movie comes to mind) that wants to impress so much it doesn't contain much humor or story.Bad: Well, not much. The original radio series ran six episodes (with another six later). The tv series ran three hours. And there were five books in the trilogy and counting with new authors. Naturally, some people's favorite lines are deleted. Some of my favorite HH lines also bit the dust. But different media have different requirements, and a movie that comes in under two hours needs truncation.Since becoming a HITCHHIKER fanatic I had a conversion to Christianity, while Adams was a militant atheist; so I had a bit of difficulty swallowing all the Temple scenes. But I was impressed at the shortcuts the movie took to get through Magrathea and the way Trillian learned the fate of the Earth and Zaphod's part in it (which she never knew in the original radio series). And, of course, a movie must be both conclusive (in case it's the only movie) and open-ended (for sequels). I think it achieved that well, with Arthur and Trillian.Altogether, this movie is both fascinating, astounding, jaw-dropping, funny and . . . well, perhaps a little disappointing for "hardcore" Hitchhiker fans who followed Adams' funny little ride through the galaxy for thirty or forty years in various media), who miss their favorite things (it's amazing how territorial we can be!).Nevertheless, it's a perfect little introduction to Adams and his world to those who have the joy of entering it for the first time. So it's both not as much as it could have been (with all the background material available) and more than I expected. I avoided this movie for thirteen years because I never thought it could live up to the previous HH incarnations, and I feel it's thirteen years wasted. Not perfect, not really funny enough (in radio, on tv, and in the books Adams' world was much funnier). But the new material is entertaining and fits pretty well. Adams (who helped construct this little flick before his timely death) is the only author in history with such ability to revise his fiction!Still, don't stop here. The text-based video game I enjoyed will hardly be to modern tastes, but don't leave HH. here. Hit the radio show, the books and the television series, whose effects are as funny as Adams' writing.

Antonis Koumpias Aesthetically very beautiful; also the comic bits were well performed. However, it did not fail to be abundant of philosophical clichés, shallow humanitarian messages and stereotypical characters. And yes(!), one more film with Zooey Deschanel playing the indie 'oh lets quit our jobs do whatever our guts tell us'girl who ends up with the stereotypical sensitive, nervous, awkward guy.

serpentiger666 The book was better, the radio show was better, and if you want to see it on screen the BBC version was great. Hollywood had great special effects and not much else, as it often does. Since half the humor of H2G2 is in the dinginess and incompetence or the entire universe, good SFX was actually a detriment.There are other problems, as well. Douglas Adams was quite dead by the time it came out, so a lot of ideas that would have probably been quite funny in his hands wound up as nothing but a whole sort of general mishmash. Some of the casting was at odds with the book descriptions, as opposed to the BBC version whose casting was so uncannily perfect that I suspect they were the people the characters were based upon.Tl;dr: watch the miniseries instead.