Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (The) (2005)

Not only was I pleasantly surprised by this movie, I was distinctly impressed. It not only lives up to the imaginative promise of its trailer, but it stands on its own beside sci-fi movies in general. It closely follows the material (even the banjo-tinged opening credits) of the BBC TV version (which was a literal if low-budget adaptation) yet makes all the effective adaptations one would expect in a big-budget sci-fi movie. (Douglas Adams himself continually adapted the story from radio to TV to computer game and so on.) I wholeheartedly endorse the casting of Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent), Mos Def (Ford Prefect), Sam Rockwell (Zaphod Beeblebrox), Zooey Deschanel (Trillian), Bill Nighy (Slartibartfast), Simon James (Magrithean ghost host -- and Arthur Dent in the 1981 production), and Warwick Davis with the voice of Alan Rickman (Marvin the Depressed Robot); everyone brought an inimitable energy to their roles but were especially brilliant in ensemble, playing off each other. (Two characters in fact share credits in Shaun of the Dead and Love Actually.) Adams' sardonic British humor (both of satire and absurdity) consistently carries through in the production values and characters' expressions and animus. The Jim Henson people are entirely effective behind the corpulent, bureaucratic Vogon antagonists. John Malkovich plays a delightfully quirky role as the increasingly chilling leader of a planetary religion where the sneeze carries a central and divine significance behind the rubric "Bless you." (Christian believers, please understand that satire means Adams is making fun of those who make fun of God.) My favorite scene involves the Point of View gun ("invented by a committee of angry housewives who were sick to the teeth of telling their husbands 'You just don't get it, do you?'") where Trillian repeatedly blasts Zaphod, who (uncharacteristically) spouts progressively sympathetic and deeper revelations into her true feelings and motives. (Out of spite, he finally wrests it away to fire upon her, but she says, "It won't work on me. I'm already a woman.") If you enjoyed Brazil or I Heart Huckabees, you should enjoy this movie even if you have not read the books. Five stars.