After a radio show, a TV series and a book, maybe the Hitchhikers Guide idea has been done to death, that could be the reason this cinematic incarnation fails to work. Or it could be that the film is just crap.
Martin Freeman’s Arthur Dent is so unbearably dull that the destruction of the world would seem like a small price to pay to be rid of him. Dent is supposed to be a normal guy, Mr Average, but that shouldn’t equate to being a complete personality vacuum.
Worse still is Mos Def. Ford Prefect was my favourite character in the TV incarnation but here he’s a nonentity, even overshadowed by Freeman’s Dent. Mos Def is most definitely not Ford Prefect and if you were to look him up in the Hitchhikers Guide I doubt you’d find the word actor used to describe him.
Sam Rockwell is a great actor but for some reason he seems to be playing Zaphod Beeblebrox as John Travolta at his most over the top and with a Texas accent. It’s not totally unfunny but it comes close.
Even the two casting choices that seem inspired, Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman, fail to work. If you have to replace Peter Jones as the voice of The Book (and as Peter Jones sadly died five years before the film was made one can allow the filmmakers that necessity, had he been alive the thought of replacing him would be almost sacrilegious) then Stephen Fry is as good a choice as I can think of, but for some reason it doesn’t work. Poor writing? Jones so ingrained in the mind that no one could compete? Probably a little of both but whatever the reason, Fry is almost as disappointing as Freeman and Def.
