The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I preface this very tepid review with the fact that I've read all five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy (yes, trilogy). Love the books. The movie? Not so much. I saw this movie with two friends who never read the books. Their take on the film is pretty much the same as mine (although one of them liked it a little better than I did).

The story revolves around Arthur Dent, a human having the worst morning a human ever had. He wakes up, finds his house on the verge of demolition, finds out his best friend is in actuality an alien, and sees the earth destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway. All this happens within the first 15 minutes of the movie. From that moment on, Arthur and his alien friend, Ford Prefect, are thrown into one bizarre situation into the next. And that pretty much sums it up.

It just didn't make it for me. While there were a few very funny moments ("Cheeky mouse"), the film as a whole seemed just a little too desperate to encompass both the book's eccentric, very British sense of humor and a story that middle-America could enjoy. By trying to do both, it did neither.

What makes writing this review so difficult is that there's not many specific items to which I can point and say "That didn't work." It's a case of the sum of the parts just didn't create a good whole. Disappointing. The funniest parts of the movie were the few tangential asides that were lifted directly from the book, and narrated in the movie. Unfortunately, those few remnants weren't enough to enable me to recommend this flick. Bummer.