The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Movie Review :
Introduction :
The Term Hitchhiking refers to generally asking for a ride when you do not have a means of transportation. Hence as the name indicates, this movie is about hitch hiking a ride and the destination is the Galaxy. Therefore this movie belongs to the Science-Fiction category. This movie was actually based on the novel> Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.
Cast and release information :
The novel is written by Douglas Adams as mentioned above and the Screen play is done by Karey Kirkpatrick. The movie is directed by Garth Jennings and produced by Robbie Stamp. Garth Jennings has also directed movies such as Hammer and Tongs and Son of Rambo. Though he has not directed many movies, he has done a very good job in making of the film, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The starrers are : Martin Freeman who plays the lead role, Mos Def who plays thr role of friend of the lead actor, Zooey Deschanel the lead actress, that is the girlfriend, Sam Rockwell who plays the role of being the president of the Galaxy, and others include Bill Nighy, Anna Chancellor, John Malkovich,Warwick Davis, and Alan Rickman. This Movie was released in United Kingdom and the United States in the year 2005, in English language. It was distributed by the famous Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment. The run time of the movie is around two hours and provides a decent entertainment.
Story summary :
This movie starts with introduction of Dolphins at the water parks that run for entertainment and people come to watch the cheerful dolphins. It runs with the comedic state that the cheers and giggles posed by the dolphins which we assume to be play pranks made by them are nothing but warnings they are giving to the humans that the world is going to come to an end. And hence according to the writer, the dolphins are considered as the mature beings far more clever than the humans. They leave the planet earth and enter the vast space with a song called > So long and thanks for the fish. This scene for beginners viewing it for the first time would be confusing as they do not understand what is going on when the dolphins get sucked into the space. What is actually being conveyed is that, the dolphins are clever creatures that should not extint when the earth destroys with the humans. Hence, the dolphins are considered more important than humans.
The next scene takes us to a man and his normal daily life. His name is Arthur. He lives far from the main city along the Green lawns. Apparently, he is the only person living there. He is supposed to vacate the premises as there is going to be a construction of local highway. But, he refuses to leave his house as the house would be demolished to pieces. He lays flat in front of his house to avoid them starting their work. Just then his friend, Ford comes with plenty of cans of beer and offers to take him for a drink and offers all the beer for the workers, so that they would be busy drinking. In the pub, Ford explains that the world is going to end in annother 5 minutes. Suddenly, when he hears some noices, they head out to see that the work on the demolition of the house is already started. the bigger problem is not only his house, but the entire planet is going to be destroyed in a couple of minutes. To escape from the tragedy, the hitchhike to leave earth.
When they Hitchhike, they get captured by the Vogon ship. Vogons are ugly creatures who are too dumb and rely on paper work than on common sense. The worst habit of Vogons is their poetry which is horrible to listen. It was them who actually destroy the planet Earth and who have successfully destroyed many other planets for the construction of an highway passing accross the universe. Arthur and Ford gets thrown out in the space for hitchhiking. Eventually, they get into the ship owned by the president. The president is out of control and goes in search of something called > The Ultimate Question. There he finds the girl whom he has net at a party and fell in love with. She does not know that the Earth was destroyed. Eventually they realize that the permission was give by the President who thought he was being asked for an autograph.
Review and Rating :
The story seems too random and misleading but the screenplay is good to watch and the animation was also effective to watch. The movie is best understood and enjoyed only when watched couple of times. Most of the audience might feel boring if the comedy aspect of the movie is not understood. Hence the movie is filled with adventure moving from one place to another in seek of the ultimate question. Hence the movie belongs to comedy adventure category.
I will give this movie a rating of = 7 / 10 for Comedy. The roles played by all the acotors are supposed to promote humour and they have done a good job. The story content is not very exciting and hence the rating would be = 4 / 10. The story depth could have been creative. In most of the cases, i thought the story or the scenes were a bit silly. Though it has some action details, It ia not an action movie as those are supposed to promote humour so the rating for this can be avoided. Just like most of the Science fiction movies in English, the animation and Graphics content is excellent to watch and has a very ppealing look. I will rate the Graphics = 7 / 10. There is a little bit of Romance but once again not a romantic category of movie. The boring and silly scenes occupy half of the movie, therefore the Overall rating for the movie would be 6 / 10. This movie is fine to watch up to a maximum of five times as long as the comedy is understood.
Hence the film, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy need not be completely avoided. It can be watched when shown in the Television but need not buy it in form of DVDs as the DVD content is also not interesting and would be a waste of money. The DVD consists of some deleted scenes, no Bloopers which might be fun, and some simple game to play. This movie remained one among the Top 10 in the box office for the first four weeks.