Film: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

But is it any good? It is funny and inventive, but probably not to the extent that you were hoping. Still enjoyable on its own merits. 7/10

We’ve seen so many versions of Hitchhiker’s by now – the radio serial, the novel, the TV series, even the computer game and the comic book adaptation – and all of them have a number of fundamental plot elements and jokes in common, and all of them (with the probably exception of the comic book) bring new variations. For somebody familiar with all of these – or even just one or two, as most potential viewers probably are – it’s impossible to see this film without certain expectations.

I found that I could separate the film, and especially the jokes, into three elements: old bits, new bits, and changed bits. The old bits are classics and work pretty well, even if you’re expecting them. There are some good new jokes (including the opening song). But the bits that they’ve changed or truncated are really glaring, because you expect one thing and get a weaker substitute.

The most controversial change is making film into more of a love story. I have no objection to this in principle, and it makes for the most fully rounded version of Trillian in any medium. But it doesn’t quite work. It’s a little too abrupt, the time since Arthur and Trillian first met is vague, and it feels like a cute throwaway joke in the original being built up into something that can’t take the weight. Martin Freeman also fails to give Arthur enough “oomph” – not the inspired bit of casting it first seemed (although still much better than Mos Def, who mumbles throughout the film and gradually fades away into the background – his character suffers more than any other in this version).

The other problem is that previous versions of Hitchhiker’s haven’t been afraid to throw in an excerpt from the Guide whenever the plot stumbles or the pace lags. The Guide extracts here, given perfect voice by Stephen Fry, are excellent, but used too sparingly, and there actually are long patches which needed just this sort of spicing up.

There are new ideas here – the best being a knitted puppet version of the cast – but not quite enough of them, and not always a proper understanding of what made previous iterations great. It could probably never live up to my hopes, but nor does it live down to my fears.