Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The

One day Arthur Dent wakes up to find that his best friend is an alien and that the Earth is scheduled for demolition. Eccentric British journey through a science fiction universe adapted from the works of Douglas Adams
The quest to give Douglas Adams' bestselling 'Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy' books/radio shows the full Hollywood treatment was a long and arduous one that the author himself would not live to see fulfilled. Adams died in 2001, having worked many years to see his popular, quintessentially English science fiction universe realised with all the special effects expertise and kinetic thrills a big motion picture production affords. At one point, Adams felt he had wasted five years of his life on seeing the film made and begged his agent Ed Victor to prevent him from ever trying again.

So after being mooted for the best part of two decades, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is finally here, arriving coincidentally only a few weeks after the revival of 'Doctor Who' on British TV, the landmark British SF show on which Adams worked. With a live restaging of Nigel Kneale's 'Quatermass' by the BBC also during 2005, there must be something in the air if the cultural bigwigs are once again backing our long-reviled homegrown science fiction.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy certainly thrives on this new confidence in British talent. We even get a British hero. Arthur Dent (Freeman) has the Englishman's disease of dithering when it comes to his own desires. Meeting Tricia Macmillan (Deschanel) at a fancy dress party, they hit it off in sozzled fashion (why aren't more seduction scenes in the movies conducted with hero and heroine half-cut?). But when Tricia suggests they immediately decamp to Madagascar, Dent's reserve gets the better of him. He hums and hars, suggests a trip to Cornwall instead, and loses the girl to the outrageously brash Zaphod Beeblebrox (Rockwell), who wields the irresistible chat-up line "Do you want to see my spaceship?"

Things get worse for Arthur. It seems his house is scheduled for demolition and his best friend Ford Prefect (Def) is in fact not from Guildford, but from outer space. Mos Def is a suitably out-of-place presence for the twitchy not-quite-normal character of Prefect, though he has to carry more exposition than is entirely fair. Prefect explains that the Earth is about to be demolished by a fleet of bureaucratic aliens called the Vogons and their only hope of survival is to hitch a lift on one of the looming spaceships. Prefect and Dent escape, the Earth is destroyed, and so the adventure begins. Through a series of pleasing improbabilities, Dent and Prefect end up on the spaceship of Zaphod Beeblebrox, who is still accompanied by Tricia Macmillan, now renamed 'Trillian' to fit in with the whole outer space and aliens thing. Beeblebrox is a brash playboy, the President Of The Galaxy who wants even more fame and money by discovering the solution to life, the universe and everything. He leads them on a journey that - if you were being unkind - could only be described as madcap. Or zany. Or silly.

The trouble with The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is that its treats lie in its digressions. Adams, a notorious prevaricator, made a virtue of his easily-distracted nature, leading us down amusing back alleys of his imagination - such as an Infinite Improbability Drive that transforms two missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias respectively, or a species with many arms whose first invention was the spray-on deodorant. His protagonist Dent embodies this inaction. The story here is of all the weird and wonderful things that happen to the characters; their intentions have no effect on the plot. Beeblebrox is meant to make things happen, but events rob him of half his brain so we lose our drive.

But, in the words emblazoned on the cover of the Guide itself, "Don't Panic". A hitchhiker's fate is to take the passenger seat while someone else drives. A hitchhiker is open to vicissitudes, going with the flow of chance and fate. Our heroes are transformed into talking sofas, into knitted puppets. We meet the man who designed the fjords of Norway and a manically depressed robot. There is so much to love.

Where the film is at its most awkward is its attempts to inject Hollywood jeopardy into these lateral movements. A rescue sub-plot and putative antagonist Humma Kavula (Malkovich) have been reluctantly copied from the big book of Action Movie Screenwriting. Adams' creation was always about transatlantic tensions: between a British hesitancy when faced with the foreigners of outer space and the American view of it as another frontier to conquer; between Dent's self-effacing inaction and Zaphod's brash impetuosity. The film cannot reconcile Adams' vision with the compromises needed to secure the necessary budget; it can't smooth over the transatlantic tensions.

As a result, the journey lacks stillness and omits often crucial exposition, rendering some sequences confusing. The subplot involving Humma Kavula is dropped altogether. We're offering a prize to the first person to justify Anna Chancellor's Questular character. Marvin the Paranoid Android (voiced by Rickman) is not properly introduced and so his asides fall flat.

Set against these mistakes are a larger store of treasures, much of which stem from the renaissance in contemporary British design talent. Animation collective Shynola bring the guide itself to life, their visual wit married to the comic phrasing of Stephen Fry. The alien Vogons recall Gerald Scarfe's vision of the English judiciary, pinstripe suit-wearing monstrosities bloated on port and privilege. The special effects reach further than the usual sci-fi clich??s, particularly in an awesome sequence in a planet builders' factory floor.
Verdict
If you are new to Douglas Adams, this is like a British Fifth Element. If not, this is about as close to a faithful adaptation of his vision as the conventions of mainstream cinema allow. Flawed, loveable and a little bit silly - in other words, very British.