Produced by Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Nick Goldsmith, Jay Roach, Jonathan Glickman

Cast: Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Warwick Davis, Stephen Fry (voice), Alan Rickman (voice), Richard Griffiths (voice), Helen Mirren (voice).

Insanely funny, moving, intriguing, illuminating, delightful in its crazy inventiveness and doing justice to the much-loved books of Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is destined to be a classic.

Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) is the epitome of ordinary middleclass Englishman, living in a modest cottage in the green English countryside, wide fields on every side.

Falling foul of the local council’s plans to build a bypass through his house, with demolition imminent in the form of huge yellow bulldozers, his indignation and outrage are soon overtaken by the news, given calmly, if a touch hurriedly, by his friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def), that the Earth has about twelve minutes till it is destroyed by the Vogon Constructor Fleet. It’s to make way for a new hyperspatial galactic bypass. Evidently the Universe is run by the same type of idiotic, small-minded, officiously callous bureaucrats as are things on Earth.

Ford, it turns out, is an alien from a small planet in the region of Betelgeuse, and so he knows about such things. Advising Arthur to drink three pints of beer rapidly and eat as many peanuts as he can (for the salt), and making sure he has his all important towel (as every hitchhiker should), they hitch a ride on the Vogon spaceship hanging in the sky above them. Just in time to avoid instant vaporisation of everything Arthur (and we) have ever known and loved. And Arthur, still in his pyjamas and dressing gown, has not yet had his morning cup of tea.

Thus starts the adventure of Arthur and Ford. Ford Prefect, by the way, has been stranded on Earth for the past 15 years. A roving researcher for the best and most important electronic guidebook for galactic travellers, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, he took for himself the name Ford Prefect when he arrived on Earth, thinking thereby to make himself inconspicuous. The ‘Ford Prefect’, as natives of Britain know, is an inconspicuous little car made sometime in the latter part of the 20^th century. Arthur saved Ford from being run over when he was standing in the middle of the road, hand extended, trying to introduce himself to a rapidly oncoming vehicle, which Ford took to be the dominant life-form on Earth. By saving Arthur from the Earth’s demolition, Ford is returning the somewhat embarrassing favour.

The characters they meet include the awesomely repulsive Vogons, seven foot high clerks typical of civil servants everywhere, whose most woeful feature is their execrable poetry. Crafted by Jamie Courtier, creative director of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, these enormous, pedantic, fat-cat bureaucrats made of latex, foam and clay are modelled on the satirical drawings of 18^th century political cartoonist James Gillray of fat-jowled and double-chinned politicians, depraved, corrupt judges and physically gross officials. Their planet features Idea Whackers, swift conditioning against any original, creative thought, which hit the unwary travellers painfully in the face whenever they stray into the realms of imagination.

Arthur and Ford find themselves (improbably, of course), on the Heart of Gold, a state-of-the-art spaceship powered by Infinite Improbability. They meet Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), two-headed, three-armed President of the Galaxy, and Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), a girl Arthur fell in love with before Zaphod inveigled her away from him at a fancy dress party back on Earth with the line, “I’m from another planet. Want to see my space ship?”  This love triangle develops through their adventures until Trillian discovers the real, utterly ludicrous and untenable reason Earth was destroyed.

John Malkovich plays Humma Kavula, religious cult leader whose followers believe creation is the result of a Big Sneeze. Malkovich’s portrayal is brilliant, his ritual gestures to his flock literally thumbing the nose at cult institutions everywhere and giving it to religions with both nostrils in a face-achingly hilarious way. Bill Nighy is wonderfully likable as the modest and self-deprecating Planet Designer Slartibartfast, who explains to Arthur who commissioned and paid for Earth in the first place, and who was really experimenting on whom.

Mixing old-school special effects, amazing actual sets and seamless CGI, the filmmakers have achieved the kind of universe where we can feel reassuringly at home – and which, when the part we know is destroyed, it actually and surprisingly, hurts. Martin Freeman gives Arthur an unselfconscious, slightly ridiculous and alarmed air, one we can readily identify with, and his character grows admirably through the film. Mos Def is fluidly intelligent as Ford and ignites a terrific chemistry with Arthur and another on a different level with his semi-cousin Zaphod.

Zooey Deschanel is an engagingly natural delight as the brilliant astrophysicist and mathematician Trillian. Sam Rockwell makes the inanely grinning, two-headed, half-wit Zaphod Beeblebrox sillier than his counterpart in the book, but somehow more charismatic and believable in the era of George W Bush and film-star/rock-star politicians. He’s superb. Warwick Davis as the Paranoid Android Marvin, voiced by Alan Rickman, is reliably funny in his obstinately depressed way.

Another awesome creation reminiscent of Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker is Deep Thought (voiced by Helen Mirren), the computer that took seven million years to come up with the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything and who subsequently retired to watch TV cartoons. Equally brilliant is the Point–of-View-Gun, requisitioned by Humma Kavula on pain of the destruction of something most dear (but not noticeably valuable) to Zaphod. Invented by frustrated housewives with obtuse husbands and sought by politicians and religious leaders everywhere, the Point-of-View-Gun instantly imparts one’s point of view to whomever it is pointed. “It won’t have any effect!” shouts Trillian when Zaphod points it at her, “I’m already a woman!”

The Guide itself, voiced by the cultured, ironic tones of Stephen Fry, is most clearly the voice of Douglas Adams. It offers exactly the kind of dependable, friendly, wise advice a galactic traveller would want. Its depiction in the film, with neat graphics by British firm Shynola, segues in happily with the real creatures and CGI effects as a character in its own right.

 The film opens with joyous footage of performing dolphins and the brightly memorable Broadway-type song ‘So Long and Thanks For All the Fish’ – with another version of the song at the end, appeasing fans’ reluctance for the film to end with the promise of a sequel at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

Acclaimed in the world of music videos, Director Garth Jennings has done an exceptional job in bringing Douglas Adams’ original characters to the screen in such a believable and wildly hysterical way, without missing the essence of the satire and the profoundly human point of view of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

© Avril Carruthers                           20^th April 2005