Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The

Many design choices were off, though. Marvin should have been more depressing-looking. They never went into Eddie's psyche. Choosing a black for Ford was interesting, but I would have preferred someone more cool and hip; Mos Def didn't quite do it for me. Trillian was very well done, and Arthur was okay. Zaphod seemed to be wrong, though. They played him more crazy than cocky, more stupid than bold. They did the whole two heads and third arm thing all wrong, too. I also didn't like the animation they used for the Guide. That could have been a lot better.

So. Funny movie, worth seeing, but falls short of excellence and doesn't live up to its legacy.  

Originally I said:

This movie may not have quite lived up to the reputation of the books et al, but I don't think there was any way it could have. A number of the jokes from the books were shortened or changed, and some things just plain done differently; but a good chunk of the stuff that was new in the movie was good and lived up to Douglas Adams's zany style, e.g. the 'point-of-view gun'. Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin was the perfect casting role, and the other casting was generally good. Zaphod perhaps could have been a bit better, but like the first book, this movie wasn't centered on him.

I really hope it does well enough that we'll see The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in a couple years.

After seeing this movie again on dvd (late September), I've revised my grade from A- to A. Maybe I just picked up on the particular zen of it, but I really enjoyed it much more the second time around. I'm not even ruling out later raising my grade to A+.

After watching it a bunch of times, on dvd and on satellite movie channels, I've revised my grade to A+.

Now I really hope they make The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe soon.