If you are a fan of dry British humor then you will like Disney’s latest flick, the first big film of the summer, “”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.”” The film opens strong, but quickly gets tiring and redundant, before picking itself back up. It’s a perfect case of filmmakers having a great concept and an idea of how to open and close a film, but no clue what to do in the middle.
Douglas Adams’ “”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,”” is one of the most famous science fiction books ever written, but to be honest: I’ve never read it, or had any clue what it’s about. So when I heard that this was being made into a film I was completely ambivalent. The trailers for this film give away nothing, so I walked into this screening cold. The film opens with a cute and funny musical number that both symbolizes what’s great and wrong with the film. The opening number is a tongue and cheek look at Dolphins. It seems that dolphins are actually from out of space, and for years the dolphins have tried to warn the Earth about its pending destruction. Instead of understanding their warnings, humans treated dolphins like pets. All of this is done in an extended musical montage, with a narrator giving you the setups for the jokes. The first five minutes of this opening is laugh out loud funny, the next five to ten minutes is mildly amusing.For those that don’t know, “”The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,”” is exactly what it says, it’s a guide that teaches people how to hitchhike, and explains the ways of the galaxy. It’s guide that is desperately needed by earthling Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) who wakes up to find that his house is going to be demolished to make way for a highway through pass, as if that’s not enough his best friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) comes along and spins a crazy story about the earth being destroyed, and they only have time enough for a couple of quick pints of brew at the local pub before they have to get off the rock known as “”Earth.”” Ironically enough the “”Earth”” gets destroyed by a bunch of Bureaucratic aliens called “”Vogons”” who wanted to create a hyperspace bypass.That is the movie in a nutshell, after that the film becomes just a series of events, that make very little sense, on their Ford and Arthur’s journey they encounter The President of The Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell) and his crew earthling, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) and the manic depressed (and my favorite character), Marvin The Robot Marvin (Warwick Davis). The film sort of falls apart when Sam Rockwell and his crew come into play, there is some ridiculous subplot involving Zaphod’s quest to become rich and famous by discovering and asking the “”Universal Question.”” As much as I love Sam Rockwell, his performance in this film is so over the top that it seems completely out of place. Everyone else in this film seems to get the understated British humor of the piece, but poor Sam seems to be going for sight gags. An example is the fact that he has two heads, everytime he runs, or speaks one of his heads flips up. It’s not funny the first time you see the gag, by the tenth time you just want to scream enough already. “”We get that he has two heads and half a brain, can we move on?””Other than Rockwell, the rest of the actors are fairly decent, if not understated, and at times underwhelming, but then that’s what dry wit is all about and why it works about 80 percent of the time in this film. The main villains, the Vogons really aren’t that interesting, but they were created old school style and use live puppets, so you have to give the film props for that. The special effects like everything else in this film, aren’t meant to make you go, “”Wow!”” so they were ok. “”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy”” starts the summer blockbuster season off in a lukewarm fashion, it’s an instantly forgettable film, but for the two hours you are watching it, you’ll most likely enjoy at least 80 percent of it. This movie did make me want to finally go and pick up the books.Final Grade B- EM Review byMichelle AlexandriaOriginally Posted 04/29/05