Product Description

Escaping from Earth seconds before its demolition, hapless Englishman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) joins extraterrestrial pal Ford Prefect (Mos Def), galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell), the beautiful and brilliant Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), and paranoid android Marvin (voiced by Alan Rickman) for a wondrous adventure across the stars in search of the answer to life, the universe and everything. Superb blend of sci-fi and comedy, based on Douglas Adams' book, also stars Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide. 109 min. Widescreen (Enhanced); Soundtracks: English DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, French Dolby Digital 5.1; Subtitles: English (SDH), Spanish, French; audio commentary; deleted scenes; "making of" documentary; sing-along; game; more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3201 in DVD
• Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2005-09-13
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Widescreen, NTSC, DTS Surround Sound
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .17 pounds
• Running time: 109 minutes

Features

• Condition: New
• Format: DVD
• Widescreen; NTSC; DTS Surround Sound

Amazon.com

Don't panic! After twenty years stuck in development (a mere blink compared to how long it takes to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has finally been turned into a movie. Following the radio play, TV series, commemorative towel, and books, this latest installment in the sci-fi-comedy franchise is based on the screenplay and detailed notes by Douglas Adams.

Hitching a ride.

For those unfamiliar with the story, everyman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) wakes up one morning to discover that his house is set to be demolished to make room for a bypass. Little does he know the entire planet Earth is also set to be destroyed for an interplanetary bypass by the Vogons, a hideous and bureaucratic race of aliens realized in the film by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Whisked off the planet by his best friend, alien-in-disguise Ford Prefect (Mos Def), Dent embarks on a goofy jaunt across the galaxy accompanied by his trusty Hitchhiker's Guide, which looks like a really fancy PDA.

The guide itself provides some of the funniest bits of the movie, little animated shorts that explain the ludicrous life forms and extraterrestrial phenomena our heroes encounter. Along the way Arthur meets the two-headed party animal/president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell) and develops an unrequited crush on fellow earthling Trillian (Zooey Deschanel). The creatures and sets are inspired and answer to the sci-fi fan's primal need to see lots and lots of cool stuff. In particular, there's John Malkovich's creepy, CGI-enhanced Humma Kavula. He's a guru leading a religion that worships the gigantic nose that allegedly sneezed the universe into existence (naturally all their prayers end not with "Amen" but with "Bless you.") The aliens the team encounters are inspired creations, eminently worthy of action figure-ification, and the sets belie an attention to detail worthy of freeze-framing. Fans of the other Hitchhiker manifestations, namely the British TV series, will be amused by a number of in-jokes sprinkled throughout the movie.

Concept art: The Heart of Gold pod on the planet Vogsphere

Where the story stumbles is in the telling--as books, the Hitchhiker's Guide was foremost about goofy and brilliant ideas that raised questions about our place in the universe while getting a laugh. The cast seems at times bewildered, at least when Sam Rockwell isn't picking pieces of scenery out of his teeth, perhaps a natural reaction to an adaptation of a book with no traditional plot. The movie has enough trouble figuring out how to get the characters from one fantastical location to the next that Adams's funniest concepts often feel left in the dust. While the reverence the filmmakers felt toward Adams's legacy is apparent, one wonders what we could have expected had the creator of this science fiction universe lived to see it with his own eyes. -- Ryan Boudinot

A Guide to the Guide

The Soundtrack	The Radio Play (CD)	The TV Series
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Deluxe Edition)	The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Paperback)	The Filming of the Douglas Adams Classic (book)

Interviews with The Cast and Director

Watch our interviews with the cast and director of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and find out what they think of other DVDs and books: high bandwidth low bandwidth

DVD Features
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the book, not the movie, or rather, the book within the--oh, never mind) is ideally suited for DVD adaptation. Navigating menus designed to look like the pages of the Guide itself, viewers can access such choice bits as deleted scenes, scenes designed to look like they were meant to be deleted but are actually little mini-spoofs of the movie, and a short featurette documentary. The animated short about the existence of God is hilarious and it's a shame it didn't make it into the movie. The sing-along-with-the-dolphins sequence is mildly amusing, and only die-hard fans will want to spend much time with "Marvin's hangman game." Spirited commentary by the cast and executive producer (and Douglas Adams's friend) Sean Solle round out the generous grab bag of extras. Perhaps most fun of all is the "Improbability Drive," a menu option that serves up a random sampling from the extras.

From The New Yorker
A bold, not to say foolhardy, attempt to divert the work of Douglas Adams, with its flood of ruminative wit, into a mainstream movie. Martin Freeman stars as Arthur Dent, your basic tetchy Brit, who is dragged along by his un-British-indeed, unhuman-friend Ford Prefect (Mos Def) on a trip through some of the more risible highlights of deep space. If you are not familiar with the conceit of the "Hitchhiker" franchise, whose previous incarnations include a radio series, four novels, and a TV show, you should find much to relish in the revelation that other worlds can be just as wearisome and mismanaged as this one. Many gags, ranging from Marvin the suicidal robot (voiced by Alan Rickman) to the Babel fish that you insert into one ear if you wish to understand all languages, survive, yet the film feels frantic and scattershot, and its rush toward a happy ending is wholly alien, as it were, to the wry pessimism of the original. Most of the cast, understandably, have a stranded and bewildered air, with the exception of Bill Nighy; he plays Slartibartfast, a donnish designer of planetary coastlines who once won an award for Norway. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker