a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Garth Jennings; written by Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the book by Mr. Adams; director of photography, Igor Jadue-Lillo; edited by Niven Howie; music by Joby Talbot; production designer, Joel Collins; produced by Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Nick Goldsmith, Jay Roach and Jonathan Glickman; released by Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment.
103 minutes. Rated PG.
STARRING: Sam Rockwell (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Mos Def (Ford Prefect), Zooey Deschanel (Trillian), Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent), Bill Nighy (Slartibartfast), Warwick Davis (Marvin), Anna Chancellor (Questular), Alan Rickman (voice of Marvin), Helen Mirren (voice of Deep Thought), Stephen Fry (Narrator), Thomas Lennon (voice of Eddie the Computer) and John Malkovich (Humma Kavula).
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If ever a movie came equipped with a built-in “thumb’s up,” it’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It only takes about five minutes of screen time before our average joe hero, Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman), gets whisked away with from his disappointing life by an interstellar hitchhiker (Mos Def) and launched into close encounters of the ridiculous kind.
If only I could, as a critic, give it a thumb’s up as well.
For those who don’t know: The Hitchhiker’s Guide, both the original book and this film, is a hilarious farce that plays around with all manner of sci-fi conventions and runs on rather contradictory impulses. The film does a good job of capturing the spirit of the book, but Jennings and Company have discovered that what comes across as funny on the page doesn’t always translate into brilliant big screen comedy.
We begin with Arthur Dent, a rather boring person who wakes up to find that his home is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass. Immediately Adams’ first sentiment is established: bureaucracy, logic, and government tend to run roughshod over poor, powerless, normal people.
Then, a high-spirited, fun-loving, wild-living alien visitor named Ford Prefect gives Arthur a perspective adjustment, stealing him off the planet just moments before Earth itself is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass! And so, Arthur is off on wild adventures with a two-headed loon named Zaphod (Sam Rockwell), a beauty named Trillian (played here by the lovely Zooey Deschanel), and a manic-depressive android named Marvin (voiced by Alan Rickman). They’ll dodge nuclear missiles, confront a cult leader named Humma Kavula (John Malkovich in a hilarious cameo), and learn about the answer to the greatest question in the universe… from a god-like computer voiced by Helen Mirren (of course). Thus, Arthur learns that his little problems are not worth worrying about with compared with the vastness of creation.
Wait, did I say creation? Adams didn’t believe in creation. He was a staunch atheist. And his writing betrays some of the problems that come along with athiesm–this is a story of starkly contradictory impulses. Adams’ writing constantly groans with the angst of believing that life is meaningless, an improbable event, a wild bunch of arbitrary developments. And at the same time, it asks us to adjust our perspectives so that we can appreciate the vastness of space, the wild variety of life forms in it, the amazing things that can happen there. If life is meaningless, why then are we drawn to beauty and repelled by ugliness? Why are we concerned about right and wrong? What is it about the cosmos that inspires us toward humility?
Thus, even as Adams insists that there is no real meaning in thing, no design, no grace, no benevolence, no God, he also curiously inspires us to appreciate life by reminding us of how many wonderful surprises lie in store for us. For some, he may actually nudge them towards God with his constant celebration of the universe’s immeasurable treasures and the frequency of improbably wonderful occurrences.
Not only that, but Adams stumbles into all kinds of truth by having his characters shake their heads at the Vogons, who are dull, destructive, and downright wicked in their narrow-mindedness, their shackles of logic, and their utter lack of art and grace. The Vogons themselves imply that there is a right and a wrong, there is a way to richer life, and that life involves awe, wonder, humility, and yes… love.
There’s much more to be said about the contradictions of Adams’ storytelling, but this is a movie review, not a dissertation on Adams, so let’s focus on the film.
Director Garth Jenning’s kaleidoscopic movie is jam-packed with special effects, both of the cutting-edge digital variety and of the old-fashioned Jim Henson Creature Shop variety (wait until you meet the brilliantly grotesque bureaucrats called the Vogons). The result is a sensational visual experience. It reminds us of the stylistic circus of Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil at times. And it’s populated with the liveliest, most comical sci-fi misfits since Galaxy Quest.
There are laughs aplenty, many of them provoked by Stephen Fry, who plays the voice of the infamously handy pocket guide to space travel. There are several animated tangent in which we’re treated to chapters from the Guide, and these simply-drawn, clever tangents are no more elaborate than an iPod commercial, but they’re as entertaining as anything else in the picture. Sam Rockwell also wins grins as the smirking, spontaneous, fashion-challenged President of the Galaxy.
But unlike Galaxy Quest, which became an audience favorite on the strength of its story as much as its stars and effects, Hitchhiker’s feels more like a long, disjointed string of skits linked by awkward transitions.
While Adams’ writing is whimsical and entertaining, a movie is made of much more than writing. It needs actors who can interpret the material properly, good timing, good editing, an appropriate soundtrack, and so much more. Hitchhiker’s Guide moves so erratically and quickly on the screen that there’s little chance to appreciate the few memorable performances. Its soundtrack is a disaster, careening between traditional adventure-movie cliches and awkward bits of comical accompaniment. (Jon Brion’s experimental style would have been a better fit here.) And its narrative embellishments include some elaborate new scenarios (apparently written with the help of Adams before he died), and those are hit-and-miss affairs.
To state the matter simply: Absurdity in bite-sized pieces, like chapters of a book, can be refreshing, even a hoot. But 90 minutes of it on high-speed is a bit numbing after a while, unless there’s true genius in the execution. There are glimmers of genius over the course of this film… the Vogons, the attack of the shovels, the scene made of yarn, John Malkovich’s fantastic cameo as Humma Kavala, Bill Nighy’s endearing appearance as Slartibartfast… but they’re few and far between, interspersed with a lot of things that are only mildly amusing or that fall flat.
Sometimes, absurdist comedies can do without much in the way of plot-case in point: Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Monty Python guys were masters of celebrating absurdity for absurdity’s sake, Hitchhiker’s suffers in that it occasionally leans toward trying to mean something, and in doing so, it clearly reflects the despairing worldview of its writer. Adams’ delightfully zany books orbited a dispiriting refrain of life’s meaninglessness, gives us characters who, while likeable, seem lost and despondent. They wander in a universe made up of mind-boggling improbabilities instead of design and purpose. Arthur Dent’s primary quest, to win Trillian’s heart, becomes nothing more than a desperate grab for temporary happiness.
Don’t panic: As entertainment, Jennings’ movie is “mostly harmless.” It’s never ponderous, and it never arrives at a “moral to the story.” Occasional flashes of comic brilliance and high-spirited frivolity give us something of a sugar-rush. Ultimately, however, the emptiness at the film’s core makes it a rather hollow moviegoing experience.
Oh how I miss Monty Python.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Actually, I believe that the ultimate moral of the story surrounded the fact that the ultimate question “What is the meaning of life?” even at the end of the movie, was never found by the aliens. It’s obviously very symbolic as well.