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.
In the same way that Peter Jones IS The Book, Stephen Moore is Marvin, so Alan Rickman faced the same problems as Stephen Fry and failed to surmount them for the same reasons. The android with emotional problems should be the funniest part in the film but I barely even smiled and certainly didn’t chuckle.
Only Bill Nighy as Slatibartfast manages to hold his own when compared to the original, somehow his exuberance and energy overshadow the films failings and he manages the almost impossible feat (at least for this film) of being funny. Unfortunately he’s only onscreen for about five minutes.
Director Garth Jennings was onto a loser from the start, how could his film possibly live up to previous, much loved, versions of the tale? It couldn’t of course but it’s how far it falls short of them that’s so amazing. This would be a bad film even if it was the only version but, with others showing that you don’t need a Hollywood sized budget to do the story justice, it seems even worse.
It’s only with the special effects that the film surpasses the TV version, although it still can’t match the ‘special effects’ in my head that accompanied the radio show. At the end of the film, before the credits role, For Douglas appears onscreen. It’s a nice sentiment but the film is hardly a fitting tribute to Adams’ genius.
