The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This movie captures some of the book's easy-going goofiness, but relies too much on action to move the plot forward | Andrew Coffin

Douglas Adams was hard at work on the screenplay for the new movie based on his novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when he died of a heart attack in 2001. For fans of the book, this is important. Adams was both erudite and ordinary, his droll humor communicating both a natural skepticism and a (sadly unrealized) longing for truth.

Despite an imperfect result, Adams's influence is definitely present in the movie. Although it contains elements of both, there are two things Hitchhiker is resolutely not, but easily could have become in the transition from page to screen: either straightforward space adventure or a parody of space adventures.

To quickly encapsulate a plot not easily encapsulated: Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) is a Brit in a bathrobe wandering through the galaxy. This comes as the result of first the destruction of Arthur's home to make way for a local bypass, followed quickly by the destruction of the entire Earth, by a bureaucratic race known as Volgons, to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur (perhaps the only human left alive) was rescued by his friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def), a not really human writer working on an updated version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the repository of all knowledge).