Entertainment Ave! The Movie Theater - A movie/DVD review of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Movie Stats & Links
Starring:	Martin Freeman, Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, Warwick Davis
MPAA Rated:	PG
Released By:	Touchstone Pictures
Web Site:	hitchhikers.movies.go.com
Kiddie Movie:	The youngin's will probably enjoy it.
Date Movie:	If she's the geeky type.
Gratuitous Sex:	Nah.
Gratuitous Violence:	Nothing over-the-top.
Action:	Some chasing.
Laughs:	There are some fun moments.
Memorable Scene:	Most of the special effects were way cool.
Memorable Quote:	Marvin thinks "I feel so depressed."
Directed By:	Garth Jennings
Produced By:	Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Jonathan Glickman, Nick Goldsmith, Jay Roach
Cool Things About the DVD
Learn a Language!	It's got French and Spanish subtitles.
Buy a New TV!	Widescreen is best.
Buy a New Stereo!	Actually, not really needed for this one.
Anything Else!	The "Making of" segment is interesting, but the deleted scene stuff pretty much shows why they were deleted in the first place.

Martin Freeman is Arthur Dent. He’s kinda a schlub living in England, with his problem being that the government people want to demolish his house to make way for a freeway bypass. His friend is Ford Prefect (Mos Def), who drags Arthur to a pub early one morning to announce to his friend that he is an alien and that the Earth will be destroyed in a few minutes. But Arthur has his own problems, telling Ford of how he was at a party and met who might have been the woman of his dreams, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), only some dude stole her away saying he had a spaceship and she should come with him instead of Arthur. Finally, one of the Vogon leaders announces to the people of Earth that their planet is destined to be destroyed to make way for an interstellar highway, much to the chagrin of the inhabitants of Earth at the time. But before the Earth explodes, Ford grabs Arthur, hitchhiking a ride on one of the Vogon planet destroyer ships, and such begins Arthur and Ford’s adventure through the cosmos.

In trouble on the Vogon ship and dumped into space, they next get picked up by another ship, and this is where most of the rest of the movie progresses as Arthur gets reunited with Trillian, while the President of the galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), has stolen the ship they are on in order to find out what the ultimate question to the universe should be. I admit, my summation really doesn’t do the story summation justice, but pretty much it is supposed to be a fun romp through the galaxy as our heroes find peril and then find their way out of peril.

Visually the movie was pretty cool, the love story was alright, and my two favorite characters were Arthur (which Martin Freeman portrays perfectly, at least for me), and the manic depressive robot Marvin (voiced by Alan Rickman), and I must admit that I didn’t read the book, so I don’t know how if it is true to the story or not, but the second viewing was actually a little more enjoyable than my first. At the movie theater, the 10 to 12ish boy sitting near me, thought it was the best film ever. Me, not so much. But I enjoyed watching the movie in the comfort of my living room.

This is really a geeky movie, and the 10 to 12ish boys who are kind of geeky will probably love it, but for adults, take that to heart. As far as the DVD goes, the deleted scenes kind of speak for themselves why they were deleted, the "Fake Deleted Scenes" try to be funny, but I didn’t think so, and I wasn’t going to watch the movie two more times to analyze the audio commentary tracks, so for that, you’re on your own. I did find the "Making of" extra pretty cool, explaining why they didn’t really want to use CGI, and I found it pretty cool how they used the Jim Henson Creature Workshop folks to make the cool aliens found throughout the movie.

I’m sticking with the 3 ½ stars out of 5 for this movie. You’ll know if this is the kind of movie for you, and if so, you should be mostly entertained.