Upon returning from my SIGGRAPH sketch jury duty, I decided that Carmen deserved a lunch out and a movie. We chose The Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy, and trundled off.

I’m a huge fan of Douglas Adams and this work in particular. Often when you really love a book, it is difficult to take derivative works and evaluate them fairly on their own merits. But even taking this into account, I thought this movie was a bit flat. I don’t think it was the actors: I really liked all the choices, particularly Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent and Mos Def as Ford Prefect. I didn’t much like Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox though, he played it just a bit too smarmy and irritating.

But the real problem is that the original book is clever and funny, and almost continuously so, and the movie is funny only in short spurts. It also tends to overplay the romance between Trillian and Arthur, and that makes it feel like it is pandering to simple sentimentalism.

Carmen was tired, and kept falling asleep during the movie. Not entirely the movies fault, but never a good sign.

I rank it a C. Not really eager to go dash out and buy the DVD.