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tried and the graveyard of box office failures is littered with the corpses of movies like Pluto Nash the closest sci-fi regularly gets to Comedy are adventure movies with comedic elements you probably laughed at moments in Men In Black or chortled at some of the lines in Back to the Future but laughter is just part of the journey in those movies not the primary purpose that almost changed in 2005 when the most beloved comedy author of all time tried to turn his funny sci-fi franchise into a big budget Blockbuster Hollywood laugher and it almost worked until tragedy struck and destroyed not only his movie but maybe his franchise's entire future this is giant freaking robot and this is why The Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy fail. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie opens with a dolphin musical number and ends with the floating head of Douglas Adams you'd think a movie with those Bonkers bookends would have captured the spirit of Adam's game-changing Hitchhikers Guide franchise it's even worse than a thought thought it would be. 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A beloved series of projects that started as a 1978 radio series and eventually led to numerous award-winning novels and a show on the Telly and all the other media Med you need to call yourself a proper franchise have you any idea how much damage this bulldozzer would suffer if I were to let it roll straight over you how much none at all. The movie started out the right way Adams wrote the script and was directly involved in the project apparently there are a lot of lunches going on about it um but I haven't been invited to any of the recent ones then his body made the exceptionally rude decision to stop working Douglas Adams tragically passed away on May 11th 2001 at the age of 49 thing you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed handing in a new draft of the film script only days earlier. Without Adams as part of the project it was looking like no one wanted to helm the film the movie ended up being directed by gu Jennings known for shooting music videos for popular bands like blur and Fat Boy Slim my first reaction when we were told there was The Hitchhikers guy to the Galaxy script coming was oh God no don't send us that. After Adams passing and Jennings addition to the production writer Carrie Kirk Patrick was brought in to do rewrites on the Adams script Kirk Patrick's background was mostly in kid films with credits on good movies but Kirk Patrick hot off writing the Jonathan lip Nikki star vehicle The Little Vampire definitely seems like the kind of writer brought in to give a script a particular all ages approachability this is the guy that wrote the Zinda is Mei Yeti movie folks Z is sorry but he ain't Douglas Adams. Despite Kirk Patrick's involvement likely softening any of the potential edges from Adam's script there's still a healthy amount of the author's tone and voice in the final product in the beginning the universe was created this made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move that might have been enough to make this movie work if it didn't subsequently make a series of decisions that fans would find baffling at best and sacriligious at worst this will all end in tears. Yasen Bay is cast as Ford prefect the compa into lead character Arthur Dent at the time ba went by the moniker most deaf as part of his musical Persona and while he'd been acting for well over a decade by the time he was cast in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy his take on Ford prefect is hampered by the decision to mumble a lot of his lines making his dialogue difficult to make out sometimes do you think it was a bit strange it was trying to shake hands with the car and that might have been an overall acting instruction to the rest of the cast freeze him free. Add another level of audio Confusion by having actors talking over each other and mixing the sound to muffle their voices good man okay the ADR on this movie was probably not a fun time that's awkward. The result is a movie based on a franchise known for superbly written and hilarious dialogue it's already supplanted the encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom with all the dialogue delivered in a way that obfuscates so much of its potential comedy who you already you already know how in spite of this hitchhiker guy does have its bright spots. Martin Freeman is a pretty spot on choice to be Arthur Dent must be Thursday could never get the anger Thursdays he plays the character with appropriately resigned bewilderment as Arthur trudges through the Galaxy in his dirty green bathro to me I'm British I know how to quue. Steven fry serves as the voice of the actual guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book he was Douglas Adams's choice and unsurprisingly Douglas Adams was right Fry's voice is easily the film's strongest asset the guide serves as background narration in the movie and is used as a device the characters can consult to get them and the audience along to the next plot beat on no account should you allow a vogon to read poetry to you. As an aside if you've never read The Hitchhikers Guide Books we strongly recommend listening to the audiobook versions narrated by fry Sam Rockwell should have been the ideal Zod bble Brocks there's anything more important than my ego on this ship I want to C shat right now hey come on by 2005 he'd already established himself as a go-to character actor for oddball Parts unfortunately he falls victim to the same dialogue issues that plague a lot of this movie computer. The movie's budget also wasn't big enough to give Zod two heads and three arms something that likely bothered di hard fans of the source material instead the movie settles on a half measure in which he sort of has two heads oh no and his third arm is kept hidden. Zo is trillion the only other Survivor of Earth's destruction other than Arthur and she isn't given anything really substantial to work with apart from her short shorts which should indicate she's being treated as something of a token hot nerd girl and little more you're too gorgeous baby stop it you driving me crazy. The film's reported budget was $45 million so uh about a little over 70 million today a sizable budget but still less than you'd expect from a well-known property hoping to Kickstart a blockbuster film franchise to its credit the production design and practical special effects work has mostly held up 20 years later but there are some clear Patchwork jobs when you start to look for them whether it's spraying a bunch of fog around sets or conveniently transporting the characters to a desert it's clear that this is a movie working against its budget instead of really feeling supported by it. For example they probably should have cut this scene with John malovich the digital effects don't work and his character serves no real purpose in the story still the movie deserves praise for what it got right the Heart of Gold the improbable Starship at the center of Douglas Adams story is given a lot of love they even figured out a way to visualize the improbability drive and it's a successful gag every time the crew is forced to use it. The first half of The Hitchhiker's Guide seems to be going pretty well as you're watching it our suspicion is that this part of the movie sticks closer to Douglas Adams original script as the movie wears on things start to fall apart and it becomes clear the production doesn't have the money or the will to take the story where it needs to go by the time the movie reaches magara did you know we built planets the end point in this version of The Hitchhikers Guide story you're ready for it to end having spent 20 minutes being bored to death by a bunch of vogans. There are a lot of vogans too many vogans for some reason we go to the vogon home planet though we're told from the outset that they're the most boring species in existence Vogons Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy so the movie spends 20 minutes hanging out in the most boring place in the universe it makes sense in movie terms to cast the vogans as outright villains but they end up dragging the movie down into something much less unique and interesting than its source material oh FR grunt bu no really. The movie did get a solid marketing push and managed to open at the number one spot at the box office ending its run with a little over $51 million in the US and another $53 million from International markets even though that sounds like a decent success context is key considering The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's budget and the fact it was expected to kick off a whole film franchise the bean counters did not see this as something worth investing more money into maybe they would have if the film managed to drum up a lot of support from critics but reactions were mixed oh no not again with spawn biggest fan Roger eert giving the movie two stars. Newcomers didn't find it to be an exciting enough entry point for the franchise and fans were mostly either resigned to the movies interpretation of Adam's work or just didn't really acknowledge it the first thing about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is that it was probably our only shot at getting a widely praised big budget take on Adam's seminal work of fiction ground I wonder if it'll be friends with me hello ground the movie's failure killed most of Hollywood's interest in it as a property it hates me and if that interest were rekindled it would take someone of Adam's talent to do it right. While we do get parodies like Space Balls or Galaxy Quest from time to time outright sci-fi comedy movies feel rarer and rarer when it comes to sci-fi comedies it seems we're more likely to get the Adventures of Pluto Nash or heart beeps I've forgotten so many happy memories with my loved ones but my brain refuses to let me forget heart beeps. 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