Starring: Martin Freeman (II), Mos Def, Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel, Warwick Davis (I)

6 out of 10: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a movie based upon a radio series, several books, a television series and another radio series. It's impossible not to get the distinct impression that if it were the other way around, and the movie was first, there wouldn't have been a radio series, several books, TV shows or anything else much following on. It's amusing but I was eventually bemused, charmed but bewildered.

It's not really anyone's fault; I think this book just doesn't translate all that well to overtly visual mediums. Even the plucky television show (which the filmmakers obviously admire, they reference it more than once) had a hard time in long stretches, routinely falling back on Marvin, the depressed robot, and the book to provide its personality.

Oddly enough, it's both books that have a hard time making the transition. Yes, there's the late Douglas Adams's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"-en toto--that doesn't seem adaptable, but it's very much the book inside that book, the interstellar tourist's companion, which can't make the transition either. And a lot of the book's asides, explanations, definitions and wisecracks are dispensed with. The film has the same jocular sense about it, but with the Guide gone, has lost much its wit.

Director Garth Jennings, a relative tyro, starts out promisingly with a sprightly musical version of "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!" the fond adieu from dolphins, the second smartest creatures on planet Earth, to the human race. Mankind, the third smartest species (mice are the first), is about to be wiped out, along with the planet, to make room for a new hyperspace thoroughfare. Earthman Arthur Dent (likable Martin Freeman) get off the doomed sphere because his pal, Ford Prefect (Mos Def, showing another versatile side) is really an alien doing research on the planet. Ford writes for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" a hip travel guide and encyclopedia, and he takes Arthur along with him, landing them on a Vogon spaceship, the very beings who just demolished Earth.

Through a series of highly improbable events Ford and Arthur end up on The Heart of Gold, the coolest, most advanced ship in the galaxy which has been stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell, still sauve, still waiting for something that completely complements him). Zaphod is the two-headed president of the galaxy and he also stole Trish (Zooey Deschanel) from Arthur at a party sometime earlier, and she's changed her name to Trillian.

The biggest problem is that liberties that are taken, though not egregious, don't make up for what they've replaced, namely some of Adams' best asides, quips and Guide explanations. Though a Vogon guard shouts "Resistance is Useless" again and again as he escorts Ford and Arthur to their supposed doom, Adams's final payoff is dropped entirely. The theological implications of the Babel fish is also unceremoniously flushed.

Injected instead into the running time is an unnecessary love triangle (courtesy of Arthur, Trillian, and Zaphod) which provides the kind of sappy plot goo that Adams maneuvered around, mostly. There's a landing and particularly uninteresting escape from the Vogon planet as well as a very nonsensical run-in with Humma Kavula (John Malkovich), a cult leader who wants the Heart of Gold or is just upset at Zaphod).

Just as the whole thing really seems to be mired in attempts to make cinematic equivalents to the sprightly entries of the guide the characters come to Magarethea. Magarathea is a planet and a population that makes other planets, usually for pleasure and it's here that they meet Slartibartfast. The chief architect, awfully fond of fjords, Slartibartfast is played by Bill Nighy who lends his character the air of the holy fool. His face is kind, his speech euphonious. He's just the right tonic for a film that seems to have traded its bird in the hand, Douglas Adams's funny, well-known "Guide," for two in the cinematic bush; ending up with horsefeathers.