IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2005...

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IvanF's Cut and Paste, No-Name Theatrical Review of
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2005

Not everybody knows the stories that made that answer in the first place, however... and sadly enough, that list of ignorants includes me...

I've never read the Hitchhiker books. And after seeing the film, I definitely don't plan on doing so...

Because I admit it... Even as a fan of "stupid comedy" (Anchorman was great... and hell, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was simply genius...), I just can't give a damn about "smart-stupid comedy"...

Life of Brian and the Monty Python movies were just so goddam ridiculous, that they simply weren't even funny to me whatsoever...

And The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was just such "stupid, smart-stupid comedy", that I don't think I laughed even once throughout the entire film...

A lot of the fans of the books at least got a chuckle or two out of the introduction song, "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish"...

I guess having Dolphins as a smarter race on the planet that we humans are, seems to give a bunch of social-political nerds out there their follicle jollies...

Not for me, unfortunately... The song was just so frickin' stupid, that it even makes Disney's recent non-Pixar animated movies into something that seemed smart and intellectual...

I think every geek out there, nerdy enough to read off the interweb thingy, knows about the basic premise of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

Earth gets destroyed by a bunch of aliens planning to build a hyperspace expressway through our solar system. And Arthur Dent of somewhere in Britain manages to hitch a ride into the cosmos, thanks to the alien Ford Prefect on earth that he befriended... One of the things that fucking social-political nerds seem to love, is the fact that the bureaucrats of the galaxy seem to think of earth, like our own bureaucrats think of those little rural areas out in the boonies of nowhere...

The thing is though, regardless of the moral irony of the Hitchhiker situation, I just couldn't stand the fucking fact that our planet was destroyed for an interstellar highway. I mean, seriously... Space is immeasurably vast. A single planet, or even an entire solar system, takes up absolutely zero space in space, even compared to a house in the middle of nowhere on earth. Why the hell do they need to plow a highway through our exact planet alone?... And hell, it's a hyperspace highway. With no off-ramps in the area, why the hell do the Vorgons even need to destroy planets, when hyperspace is sort of?... you know... NOT in real space?...

Regardless of how nit-picky my little suburban opinion may be, it definitely didn't bode well for the film when I was already shaking my head at its stupidity just ten minutes into the film... I mean, like I said, I like stupid comedy. But smart-stupid comedy deserves to be critiqued if it actually thinks or tries to be smart... and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy definitely thinks it's smart, at least from the fact that you can almost sense some political undertones buried somewhere beneath that underwear...

Some of the aside moments with the Guide itself were decent. Surprisingly enough, the translator guppy in the ear makes more sense to me than the universal translator ever did in Star Trek... But there simply wasn't enough of the quirky parts of the Guide shown inside the movie for me to really care about... Probably the best thing about Ford Prefect was how essential his damn towels were. But in the film at least, we never figured out how or why he fought off a whole army with the damn thing draped around his neck... and we really didn't learn anything about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy either, besides the fact that it has written brightly on its cover...

Martin Freeman was a decent choice as Arthur Dent. He had the patented bathroom wardrobe look down pat, but it's just unfortunate that he had pretty much nil memorable lines in the end... I expected some more British humour from a British humour sort of film. But probably the only line of his that I did chuckle at was, "I'm British. If there's one thing we know, it's how to queue"... But as for the rest of the film?... uggh...

I'm sorry, but the sofa transformations and the yarn spewing? Just plain stupid...

The Darwin and Livingston romantic subplot, I presume? Had me gagging more than yarn, that's sure...

And probably the only decent scenes that Arthur Dent even had throughout the whole film, were on the planet Vorgon... The flap jack things hitting him in the face whenever he came up with a thought, was actually so stupid that it actually came out funny... And when it came to the blue forms to release Tricia from imprisonment? Maybe it's just because I recently rewatched The Terminal, but I actually did find the queuing scenes to be somewhat amusing...

But seriously, even if I did enjoy some of Martin Freeman's performance, how the hell could I ever take this non-serious movie seriously, when the rest of the characters were given absolute crap to work with?...

I never thought I could ever hate Sam Rockwell and Alan Rickman together, especially after they amazed me with Galaxy Quest... But Sam Rockwell's Zaphod character was just so over the top, that I groaned every time his second head popped up on screen. He was just so damn stupid, that he wasn't even a rock star kind of stupid character like I thought he would be. Instead, he was literally just a guy with a brain fueled with lemons. And as funny as that may sound on paper, his constant childish antics were just plain grating on screen... And on paper, I'm sure Marvin the Robot sounded funny as hell. I mean, how many times do you actually get to meet a maniacally depressed machine, right? But even his tirades got so damn boring near the end. There was obviously no variety in his voice, but why wasn't there variety in his script as well?... Over and over again, he just shook his big ass head and complained about something, without ever giving a good, unique punch line to actually make the scene funny...

Stupidly enough, Marvin the depressed robot actually made this film... depressing?... WTF?...

All the subcharacters were pretty much wasted as well... Mos Def as Ford Prefect had absolutely nothing to do but guzzle down pints of beer, and brandish his awesome weapon of a towel. But hell, when his car handshaking scene reminded me too much of Herbie: Fully Loaded? You know that ain't good for business then... John Malkovich as Humma was wasted as well. The special effects of his eyes and mechanical legs were spectacular. But what was the point, when his entire villain plot was suddenly dropped half way through the film? They never even returned to him to get Zaphod's second head. Which was more than welcomed, since I hated that goddam second head and third arm in the first place... And the Vorgons? Their premise was alright, being bureaucrats who follow their forms and releases more than they ever do common sense. But I just couldn't stand their Star Wars-esque accuracy when firing weapons. I just couldn't stand their voices, or how Star Trek Nemesis their costumes looked in the light....

Now, I do have one good feeling to report, at least... Zooey Deschannel as Tricia/Trillian was absolutely adorable.

But girls with nerdy glasses, with perfect hair while wearing nothing but boxers for underwear?... Oh dear God, bloody hell, were my pants going to implode then and there...

Either way, the fact that she was no longer cute (yes, not even in the shower scene... something is wrong me with, I know) allowed me to concentrate on the fact, that the romantic subplot of the film was absolutely terrible... She had some chemistry with Arthur, or at least when she was pining in secret over him, I admit it. And contrary to popular belief, I actually liked her supposed character development that happened with Zaphod, whenever she shot him with that Point-of-View ray gun. The tears on her face were perfect. And kinda sexy, actually...

But whenever she was with Arthur? I don't know, but the two just didn't mix... Not only that, but this is a nerd film, right? The fucking romantic crap got in the way of all the better stuff we wanted to see, like giant computers watching cartoons for millions of years, and the fact that not only was Rome built in a day, but that the earth was as well...

See, fanboys of the original books seem to hate the 'cop-out' at the end, that earth was rebuilt like a computer backup at the end. Disney had to have a happy send-off for the film, afterall... The thing is, that was probably the only part of the film that I did like. It was the only portion of the film that actually had life (pun intended) and imagination to it... The only character that I did love in the film, was the company owner who built custom planets. I mean seriously, who the hell couldn't enjoy a threatening line like, "Come with me, or you'll be late... late I mean, as in The Late Arthur Dent..."?... And I dunno, just all the special effects of the mine cart going everywhere across the planet in space, really almost made up for the fact that the film was completely ruined and spoiled, by stupid inside geek jokes and romantic interludes for the first hour and a half of the film...

Let's face it. I'm not a Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy fan... I've never had an interest in the books, and I still don't give a damn about them, especially after watching a film that was pure British boredom for two bloody hell hours...

Hell's bells, I'd rather watch British porn... of two British blokes not having sex, but I Future Guy digress...

Because I was expecting something hot from this film, you know? Something fresh...

Everyone knows that it's the fucking cows who are going to take over the world!...