A Pilgrim’s Digression

http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/

Last night, I saw the movie The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Before I get very far into this review, I should make an embarrassing admission right up front. I have never read any of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” books. Not a single one.

For an ex-English major and pseudo-lit’ry ‘writer’ to admit such an astonishing character flaw as not having read Douglas Adams is probably unforgiveable in the social circle in which I live. But it is an incontestable fact of my existence, and so I must be honest about it.

Now, to continue with my pre-ramble, my wife did not want to go see the movie, so I went by myself. It always feels rather odd going to the movies alone, now. I think the last movie I saw alone was “Attack of the Clones.” There is a pattern here: like a lot of women, my wife isn’t much interested in Science Fiction. She may have liked this film, however, if I could have persuaded her to give it a chance.

Our local cinema is a three-screen theatre that used to be a one-screen theatre back in the nineteen-thirties. It’s balcony was converted into two small theatres with nose-bleed seating. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” was showing in one of these small theatres while the film “XXX: State of the Union,” a real stinker of a film supposedly, was showing in the large, main theatre. I think the theatre owner, an older gentleman named Henry whom I have spoken to once or twice (he sells the tickets in the outside booth), made a miscalculation in how he arranged his movies in his theatres, because the theatre for “Hitchhiker’s Guide” was packed. There was not a single available seat in the entire place and a few people were sitting on the aisle.

My first impressions of the film were entirely positive. Adams himself produced the film and wrote the screenplay, so presumably the film is as much his baby as anyone’s. It’s an entertaining film, genuinely funny at moments. People in the theatre laughed. I laughed. This movie has received bad reviews, I have since learned, but I saw nothing excessively bad about it. I have only a few criticisms I will get to later.

First, I want to praise the film, however. The opening sequence in which we learn that dolphins are the second-most intelligent creature on Earth (humans are third) was hilarious. The dolphin song which opens the film, “So long, and thanks for all the fish,” was particularly hilarious. I’d like to find the lyrics for it somewhere. I was a little confused, however, because the narrator never tells which is the most intelligent creature on Earth, but this point is resolved in the end, which forms kind of the crux of the film. I’ll leave the answer to that unresolved; you’ll have to see the film.

Additionally, there are slight, joking references to other science fiction films throughout, which will please the initiated. In one scene, the female protagonist, Trillian, slices bread with a small lightsabre knife, complete with appropriate lightsabre sound effects. There is a scene later in the film in which the heroes visit some planet or other ruled by a priestly caste, and the scene in which they exit the ship in a glow of light is a reference to “E.T.,” right down to the bicycle in one corner of the frame.

The jokes in the film are Monty Python-ish, and many of them are probably dependent on one’s knowledge of the books, knowledge which I don’t have. I found it amusing and a litle sexy that when we first meet Trillian, she is wearing tight, blue running shorts and Argyle knee socks, but other than the oddity of it I don’t know what it meant. All I know is, I found those socks pretty sexy on her for some reason. Perhaps in these Argyle socks, Adams has stumbled upon some previously unknown fetish object.

There is also a joke about a towel which I never quite understood. When he saves Arthur’s life during the destruction of the Earth, Ford tells Arthur Dent never to be without the towel he gives him, an ordinary bath towel Arthur carries throughout the film. This is funny, for some reason, and one expects the reason a towel is so important to be revealed by the end of the film. But I don’t think it is ever revealed why Arthur needs the towel. Many of the jokes are like this: uncertainly funny.

Marvin the depressed robot is brilliant, however. Voiced by the dry, droll Allen Rickman, Marvin by far provided the most laughs in the film. Some of his expressions are classic. “This will end in tears,” he says at one point; or, as when they sight a planet they have been seeking, “This is even worse than I thought” (after all the others have expressed awe at the planet’s beauty).

I have been trying to think of a film to which to compare “Hitchhiker’s Guide,” but nothing really compares. “Space Balls” is a parody, and other than that, I can’t think of too many other science fiction comedies. “Hitchhiker’s Guide” may be a kind of British anti-Star Wars, showing in theatres a few mere weeks before the Star Wars sextet comes to an end. However, as I said previously, Monty Python is the closest thing I can think of to what “Hitchhiker’s Guide” is attempting.

Done praising the film, now let me critique. My only criticism has to do with the main plot point, which I feel was left unresolved and/or confusing. I have to be up front about one more thing, however: I lost a contact lens about twenty minutes before the film ended, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the final moments of the film. I was distracted, to say the least, and by the time I gave up trying to put my lens back in my eye and had resigned myself to being partially blind, the film was mostly over.

I suppose a real journalist would not make such an admission. A real film reviewer would just make shit up. Not that I am any better than a real film reviewer. I make up a whole barn-full of shit on a regular basis. But I feel it best to disclose that I was severely handicapped in my effort to properly appreciate the end of the film.

That admission out of the way, the conflict in the film is between the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox (thank you IMDB for the spelling), and a priest played by John Malkovich, Humma Kavula. Malkovich’s character and his followers worship a god who sneezed the world into existence; prayers are concluded with a sneeze followed by a chorus of “bless you”. The priest wants a gun that, when someone is shot with it, allows the ‘victim’ insight into the perspective of the shooter. To ensure that Zaphod and his band of hitchhikers return with the gun, Kavula takes Zaphod’s second head and brain as collateral.

Zaphod, Arthur, Trillian, Marvin, and Ford find the gun, but as best I can tell never deliver it to the priest, nor do they claim their reward, which is the question that will elucidate the answer to life, the universe, and everything (the answer is 42, but no one knows the question). So the central plotline of the film is never resolved at all, as best I can tell. Nor does Zaphod ever return to the priest and reclaim his second head and brain.

However, as I said, for the last twenty minutes of the film I was either fussing with a contact lens, or holding my bad eye closed so as to see the film without getting a headache. Maybe I missed something.

Since the ending basically sets us up for a sequel—something about a restaurant at the end of the galaxy—presumably the quest for the question continues, if this first film makes enough money to justify a sequel.

Overall, if you don’t mind that the plot is thin and is clumsily resolved (if resolved at all), the movie is quite witty and smart. To enjoy this film, I suppose one must either be an Adams devotee, or else someone used to watching fun, campy movies with thin plots and unresolved conflicts. Otherwise the film probably lives up to its bad reviews. I myself am used to watching films tht don’t quite have mass appeal going for them, so I liked this film, and I think you may like it as well.