Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Phil, Barry and I went to see the new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie at the local cinema tonight, and, despite a few reservations beforehand, it rocks… No it rules! It rules like Genghis Khan!

It’s the story of Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), a fairly typical Englishman who wakes up to find his house is due for demolition, but his friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) has much, much bigger news… The Earth is due for demolition not long after Arthur’s house.

Now, I’m a huge fan of the Hitchhikers Guide books, radio shows and the 1981 BBC tv series, and as I said when Douglas Adams died, “The entire 5 part trilogy basically skewered every cliché of sci-fi pulp known to man and is one of the funniest things ever written.”

Anyways, I had a few reservations about this movie adaptation… The biggest one was Mos Def as Ford Prefect, now if you asked me who I’d have play Ford in the movie, I could have went down to the local Office Depot and written on every sheet of paper in there and still not reached Mos Def, but he plays the role very well. Another reservation was the position (or lack thereof) of Zaphod Beeblebrox’s second head, the teaser trailer didn’t show much, but it was very different, and also slightly annoying, but at least it wasn’t around for long.

Overall, it was a great adaptation of a very bizarre body of work and I think hardcore fans will love it, even though there are slight changes it’s not like the entire Hitchhikers universe has a solid base as each adaptation was different in someway. Everyone else will find it a surreal movie with great laughs, but they’ll miss out on all the in jokes, like the music at the start and a certain robot waiting in line on Vogosphere… But it’s all good.