The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

Perfect cast and a good story

just watch it!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Because it bored me rigid. The cast was mostly horrid: Tim from The Office couldn't muster any enthusiasm. Sam Rockwell is just plain annoying. The bird who resembles Katy Perry is utterly vacant. And the black fella ends up melting into the background after his promising start. I think 60 minutes is more than enough time to judge if a picture is entertaining or not. Avoid at all cost.

The top review now is a horrible TL;DR.Here is a better review: This is an unusual comedy that does NOT go down the already cleared path of cliché movies - be it comedies or otherwise - and not just cracks jokes but at no point presents itself in any serious way. Or rather - is from almost the very start a collection of ridiculous absurdities that are managed and kept in line by a "logical" story. However be warned - this is in a weird, modified way pretty much standard British humour. And that I find very refreshing, and so will probably you too. So go watch it!

Of course, this is one of the wittiest books ever written. It is done tongue in cheek with the kinds of absurdities that one would expect from a race of aliens that don't understand us. The election of Donald Trump would be enough to give this verisimilitude. This is not unlike Monty Python in that it is hit and miss and one should take one absurdity and move on to the next. Once again, it is being vilified by people who can't stand it when liberties are taken by script writers and movie producers. The thing is that the fundamental plot is still there. Do we really need another exact version thrown at us? I thought the special effects were great as well as the helter skelter movement of the characters. And where else would one find a depressed robot? What a joy that we have Douglas Adams and such creative minds!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a film that compliments the book series very well. The cast is well chosen, the story is brilliant, and it's a funny film that really brings out the best of Douglas Adams' famous series. For the most part, if you've read the first book you'll be up to speed, though it's worth reading the rest. The film features Arthur Dent, whose home is demolished one terrible morning, to make way for a road bypass. Only minutes later is planet Earth destroyed, to make way for a galactic bypass. And so begins a long story of whacky space adventures that take its characters on a journey literally out of this world. There are four main characters that are the premise for this film. Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell) an egotistic two-headed President of the Galaxy, is on a quest to find the Ultimate Question. Ford Prefect (Mos Def), named after a car he almost got ran over by, is a friendly alien from a planet in the vicinity of Beetleguese. Tricia McMillan (Zooey Deschanel) is the love interest of the movie, a notable difference to the book that I will mention later. And of course, we cannot forget Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), an ordinary man from England who has been thrust into the perils of his Galaxy. While Marvin (Warwick Davis), the chronically depressed robot, is quite a major character, he doesn't see that much screen time. The film paces itself really well, and I think the first scene prior to the destruction of Earth is very well made, setting the film up for a thrilling adventure. Interjections from none other than master narrator Stephen Fry help jog the story along, by adding little anecdotes of information from the novels. The cast is fairly well chosen, especially in Martin Freeman, who portrays the often-frustrated but overall-caring character of Arthur Dent so brilliantly. There doesn't seem to have been any purpose in Questular Rontok (Anna Chancellor), but each actor is almost a direct match to the characters in the novels. That is, except Trillian.Trillian is overall a fairly minor character in the novels, however it was interestingly chosen to push her more into the limelight, giving her a presence in a love triangle between Arthur and Zaphod. It was clever to do this, but fans of the series may be disappointed to see a whole new story arc introduced purely for the purposes of romance (although I wasn't). The story of the Vogans in the series feels wholly incomplete, so it seems wise that it was resolved in the movie. On the whole, the film intertwined plots from the novels ingeniously, adding what seems necessary here and there. It seems the ending on Magrathea was a little unusual, but on the whole it completes the movie decently enough. This is a film that, to use Adams' quote, has made a lot of people very angry, and even been regarded as a bad move. Perhaps these people should take into account that many of the differences between the book and movie were written in by Douglas Adams himself, prior to his death. On the whole, it's mostly harmless, and certainly worth a watch. I certainly enjoyed it; it really compliments the novels very well. Arthur Dent, and for that matter all the characters, are brilliantly acted out. The plot is to be commended for the most part, and the introduction of a romance that really supports Arthur as a character is on the whole satisfying.If you've read the series you have to watch the movie. And if you haven't, it's still definitely worth a see.