Hitchhiker's Guide == Brilliant

OK, I'm going to talk about plot points and endings and if you haven't seen the movie (even if you've read the books or heard the radio series) don't read on. Just don't.

Now then, since you've all seen it I don't feel the need to stick to a linear plot summary or try and have a real point, I'll just mention things I thought were funny.

Zaphod as President Bush of the Universe was perfect. While the original character of Zaphod was a little dry, and was a real rival for Trillian, and the cortex of his brain was considered the single coolest place in the universe, the new Zaphod is rather more outrageously dimwitted. But he's still on the quest to find the ultimate question, with at least as much fervor as the original Zaphod, and has many good lines while he's at it. I always found old Zaphod's lines could be things that Ford might have said, they both had similar ways of reacting to the rest of the characters, and in the radio play the voices were a bit too similar. New Zaphod has some great lines like: "I'm the president of the galaxy, I don't have time to do a lot of reading!"

It was pretty obvious they were making Bush references and for that I'm glad they changed the character.

Trishia (Trillian) was much more convincing as an astrophysicist than the girl who played her in the original miniseries. (Yes it's because she was blonde, don't bother.) And man did I ever fall for her when they did the shot where stuck her face into the machine that determines what you were desiring at that moment, I just thought "hey, you're looking at me, aren't you?" *sigh*

I always find it funny when actors bring elements of the previous characters they've played into a new role. Like Natalie Portman taking the whimsy of her character in Garden State and using it against little old unsuspecting love-struck al in Closer. In this film the actor who plays Arthur Dent, Martin Freeman, is most famous for playing Tim in "The Office". One of the story arcs of "The Office" was how nice guy Tim slowly becomes more and more of a BS artist and becomes increasingly like his vile boss David whom he despises.

In the movie Arthur tries to get out of a couple of sticky situations, like the Vogon captain asking about his poetry, through excellent use of bullshit, and he did it with the same affectations as his character in The Office did.

Speaking of which, the scene where Arthur rescues Trillian from the Vogons by filling out the proper prisoner release form was absolutely brilliant. I kept expecting them to get frustrated with the bureaucratic process and try a daring rescue of some sort, but they stuck to their guns, and as soon as the proper signatures were gotten Trishia was free to go. (this is quite a big plot deviation from the book, but it's a good way to keep the Vogons in the story, and it really fleshes out the 'not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous' Vogon character trait. As such the movie had no real villains, just insane systems of puzzles and circumstances that they never had to defeat, but simply get through. Very British, somehow.

Any doubts I had about the film not being enough of a comedy were instantly vapourized at the very beginning when the dolphins did the extended musical version of 'so long and thanks for all the fish' with a tune very similar (eerily so) to the song 'Complicated' by Avril Lavigne.

Another great piece of humour was the way-over extended pull-away from the earth right before it blows up.

Finally, I quite enjoyed the very, very different ending to the movie. Instead of being dropped on earth mark 2 with the cavemen and the telephone sanitizers and hair dressers that were shot into space from a more sensible planet, the Magrathians recreated Earth exactly as it was the morning it was destroyed, so that the program could pick up where it was. But Arthur decides he doesn't want to be on earth, and asks Trishia if she wants to go off somewhere in space with him. I really liked that they had them end this version of the story by getting together. It's sort of like how I thought the last Charlie Brown strip should have had Charlie finally getting a kiss form the little red-haired girl. "Great Job, Tim, you'll never have to work in an office again."

Update: One other thing, the fact athat they were daring in enough to use three entirely separate god machines (deus ex machinae) to get out of bad situations (the platnet factory, the point-of-view gun and the ship that cycles through every possible permutation of existence) was very ballsy of them.
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