I'm already a woman, it won't work on me.

I caught The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy today before slipping out of town to raft for the weekend.

Unfortunately, it's not that good. It just falls flat as a movie. It's reasonably faithful to the source material, it keeps much of the zaniness of the book, but doesn't trust itself to get completely absorbed by it. It tries to add some semblance of structure to the whole thing, which just feels tacked on. I don't blame them, as I don't think they could have made a good movie on pure whimsy either. I think they might have just been screwed from the outset. I'm a big movie fan, and a big fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide books - and I'm coming up with blanks about how to turn it all into a reasonable movie. The best I can do is suggest more zaniness paired with more naration to hold the whole thing in place.

The visualizations of all the things I've read about were fantastic. They were all slightly wrong to me (since I've visualized them differently while reading) but I was comfortable with all of them - with one exception - the magrathea hovercraft just felt wrong.

As a big fan the only scene I really missed was when the philosophers busted in on deep though revealing the answer. That's my favorite moment in the book, and skipping it in the movie caused a sad twinge inside me.

Overall, fans of the source material might like it. It might be the great whimsical visualization you've been waiting for. Others might use the movie like a gateway drug. After seeing it they might be curious for more and go start reading the books, to be sucked into their irreverant grasp. But I suspect most people will just go "huh? that was silly and not all that funny." I know the theater I was in was three quarters full and there wasn't a lot of laughter.

The one big exception was when they said the line I quoted above. That got lots of laughs. Plus, it had a bonus of being just after the best acting moment of the movie (care of Trillian.) That's probably why it got the laughs, you know, a comedic moment to relieve tension from a serious one...

My recommendation: spend the 10 bucks on the book. After the two hours you would have been watching this in the theater you'll be halfway through (it's a fast read) and will have laughed much more. If not, you can return the book - the theater won't let you return your ticket.

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