Mostly toothless

Noel Vera

Garth Jennings' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," is his
reasonably faithful adaptation of Douglas Adams' constantly mutating
series of stories (it was first a BBC radio play before it became a
five-part 'trilogy,' then a TV serial and even a computer game),
about one Arthur Dent, plucked from his ordinary British life just
before the Earth is destroyed to make way for an interstellar
bypass.
Depending on who you talk to, people consider the original radio
series to be the best incarnation of Adams' stories, and while I've
only read the novels, I can imagine what they mean: Adams' abilities
at description and metaphor are, to put it politely, largely
functional (to describe the beauty of a song, he imagines Paul
McCartney writing it, and guesses how much real estate can be bought
from the royalties), and his characters work mostly at a cartoon
level. But the dialogue, which can sound like two science-fiction
writers kibitzing over a bottle of Scotch, has a spare charm, and
the plot (such as it is) moves in so many directions only the
freewheeling medium of radio (where the destruction of Earth can be
conveyed with a few loud sound effects) can do it justice.

Perhaps Jennings' smartest decision in adapting "Hitchhiker" was to
follow that same kind of freewheeling attitude: in effect, not
putting much time and effort into the special effects and adopting a
big Hollywood-movie version of the low-budget look (plenty of CGI,
but not too glossily executed) that the novels (and, presumably,
radio and TV series) bring to mind. Thus you get the destruction of
the Earth, over in a few minutes; an entire planet's demise being a
hard act to follow, the rest of the movie feels like an overextended
afterthought, which may be the picture's intention: Jennings, taking
his cue from Adams, isn't worrying about it; he has other
priorities, like the need to get a good cup of tea.

A huge part of adapting Adams to the big screen is casting the right
kind of actors to play his characters; fans have so many opinions
(and casting suggestions) that pleasing everyone would be an
impossible goal. To my eyes, the production does a (again)
reasonable enough job. Martin Freeman (from the British TV
comedy "The Office") as Adams' hero Arthur Dent fits the bill as a
regular bloke thrown tealess but with towel in hand into a series of
adventures--Freeman has the 'regular' quality down pat, but is never
too regular that he's a dull spot onscreen (you're always feeling
sorry for him--sorry he's lost the Earth, sorry he can't get good
tea, sorry he's hopelessly in love with Trillian (Zooey Deschanel),
a fellow transplanted Earthling). Deschanel is a sweet ingénue of a
presence, and Mos Def is agreeable enough as Ford Prefect, Dent's
alien neighbor, but both tend to be overshadowed by Sam Rockwell's
loud Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the Galaxy--Rockwell takes one
part Brad Pitt, one part rock star and maybe two parts George Bush,
Jr. ("I'm the president of the galaxy; I don't get a lot of time for
reading"), works the mix as mightily as he can; the results are
funny if at times wearying. Perhaps my favorite performance isn't a
whole actor but a voice--the wonderfully morose Alan Rickman as
Marvin the Paranoid Android. Rickman's delivery, coming out of
Marvin's bulbous head (perched atop a small, paunchy robot body) is
hilariously expressive, the very embodiment of Adams' pessimism
("Life?" Rickman says hopelessly, "Don't talk to me about life.").

Throw in Bill Nighy as planet designer Slartibartfast, a cameo by
John Malkovich as leader of a cult, and an ill-fated sperm whale
(voice by Bill Bailey) who muses on the meaning of his all-too-short
life, and you've got a nicely worked-out big-screen version of what
at one point was considered an unadaptable series of comic science-
fiction novels (I've already mentioned how the books are considered--
and I agree on theory with the sentiment--a step down from radio).
Jennings, unlike most directors who come from music videos and
commercials, doesn't have a flashy visual style; he seems to take
his cue from fellow music-video directors turned feature filmmakers
Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, whose unflashy styles helped flesh
out the conceptually challenging scripts of Charlie Kaufman (Jonze
with "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation," Gondry with "Human
Nature" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"). He seems to
appreciate, as Jonze and Gondry have, that to fully realize the
strangeness of a story like Kaufman's (and, to a lesser extent,
Adams'), you need to ground your picture in as much realism as
possible--the better to find purchase when you take a leap into the
great unknown.

I think I can say that this is an excellent adaptation of Adams to
the big screen, if not the best possible (Jonze and Gondry might
have done better). If for all that it's not an entirely satisfying
bit of comic science-fiction filmmaking, the problem may reside with
the source material. Reading the novels I found Adams too--I don't
know, benign, maybe, too easygoing, despite starting out with the
end of the world. Dent loses his home planet but the loss never
seems traumatic; the fact that he's encountering all these grotesque
aliens and can't get a good cup of tea seems to have left a more
lasting impact on him. Adams comes from that tradition of comic
science-fiction pioneered by writers like Kurt Vonnegut and John
Sladek, where adventures are mostly picaresque, wild concepts pile
up willy-nilly, and the overall tone is this side of dark (Adams'
feels less dark than dim).

Vonnegut has been known to end the world (most notably in "Cat's
Cradle," arguably his masterpiece), but he's never blown it up, and
never done so in the opening pages (he knows it's a difficult act to
top). Adams has Vonnegut's absurdist tone, but avoids (wisely, I'd
say) his more stridently humanist concerns, his need to baldly tell
humanity what they're doing wrong and what they should be doing
instead. Less wisely, he avoids expressing any concerns whatsoever
(well, maybe for the odd cup of tea), and the notable lack of
interest in any recognizable human goal or value robs his humor of
substance, weight, urgency. Adams, in effect, reads and feels like a
lightweight.

The difference is more telling when you compare Adams to Sladek
(perhaps my favorite of comic science-fiction writers). Sladek like
Adams avoids Vonneguts' blatant preaching, but there's a darkness to
his works, a feeling of malevolence present that, if anything, is
more unsettling than either Adams' or Vonnegut's, because it's so
subtle. Sladek's adventures are as picaresque as either of the two
writers, but unlike Adams, who gives you the sense of working up a
setpiece, playing with it a while, then abandoning it for the next
one, there's a coherence to Sladek's novels that can be seen
retroactively; each event only seems random, a far more difficult
effect (I'd say Sladek--who's little known and woefully underrated,
particularly in his own country--is a better writer overall, more
evocative prose, more effective powers of characterization, than
either Adams or Vonnegut). Yes, this is an excellent adaptation
of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy;" I'm just wondering if, after
all is said and done, that is enough.

(First published in Businessworld, 6/24/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)