The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

last updated 8 January 2015

This 'œhugely likable' adaptation of the cult classic book by Douglas Adams is wonderfully, 'œdeeply goofy,' said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. Hapless Arthur Dent, played by Martin Freeman, steps out of his English country house to stop the bulldozers about to demolish it for a highway bypass. His buddy Ford Prefect, played by a brilliantly deadpan Mos Def, swoops in to save him—not from domestic problems but from the Earth's demolishment by aliens who'd like to build a galactic bypass. The two hitch a ride onto a spaceship run by morose, paper-pushing monsters whose preferred method of torture is reciting bad poetry. Arthur and Ford escape, and fall in with the two-headed president of the galaxy. His foxy sidekick is an earthling whom Dent fancies. It's as if the Monty Python crew had rewritten Star Wars, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. Arthur would just as soon find a decent cup of tea as uncover the meaning of life. The zany, anarchic momentum only flags toward the end, when the love story between Arthur and the Earth girl, played by a lovably loopy Zooey Deschanel, takes hold. But the movie always remains a 'œquintessential English comedy of understatement, in which the more cosmic the scale, the more niggling the complaint,' said David Edelstein in Slate.com. Our travelers are accompanied by a depressive robot named Marvin who confounds his enemies with his sheer gloominess. When the movie gets these illogical bits of life just right, it's nearly divine.

Rating: PG