Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition... Read allMere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."Mere seconds before the Earth is to be demolished by an alien construction crew, journeyman Arthur Dent is swept off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher penning a new edition of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
- Awards
- 1 win & 10 nominations
Yasiin Bey
- Ford Prefect
- (as Mos Def)
Bill Bailey
- The Whale
- (voice)
Su Elliot
- Pub Customer
- (as Su Eliott)
Stephen Fry
- Narrator
- (voice)
- …
Richard Griffiths
- Jeltz
- (voice)
Ian McNeice
- Kwaltz
- (voice)
Helen Mirren
- Deep Thought
- (voice)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe producers have stated that this movie was not a literal translation of the books (just as the books were not a literal translation of the original radio show), but all of the new ideas and characters came from Douglas Adams. The hired writer simply came aboard to improve structure and make the screenplay more coherent.
- GoofsWhen Arthur is speaking to Trillian (Zooey Deschanel) as she takes a shower, he briefly begins to address her by her real name (Zooey) then corrects himself.
- Crazy creditsAfter a couple of minutes of typical movie credits, there is a final, classic Guide entry. It refers to Arthur Dent carelessly speaking words about a towel, which ends up being interpreted by a pair of warring factions as a devastating insult. They then spend thousands of years coming to Earth bent on revenge, however "due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog". The Guide concludes with the reassuring nugget of wisdom, "this sort of thing is going on all the time".
- Alternate versionsCast as Satellite Technician - scène deleted (Did appear in a trailer)
- SoundtracksSo Long & Thanks for All the Fish
Written by Joby Talbot, Garth Jennings and Christopher Austin
Produced by Joby Talbot
Vocals Performed by Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi & The R'SVP Voices
Featured review
It's a tad hard to put my feelings about this version of the source material seeing as how I heard the radio play, read the books, saw the amazingly great mini-series, and even played the delightful text-based adventure game on my now ancient, then new computer. It's somewhat difficult to divorce my self from all of the aforementioned incarnations and just enjoy this film for what it was. Not to say that it was anything horrid, far from it. Some aspects of the adaption were pretty good. Martin Freeman (who was great in "The Office) made an enjoyable Arthur Dent, Mos Def came off far better than I would have even thought as Ford. Those are two things of the top of my head. I'm sure if I were hard pressed I could think of other aspects I enjoyed, it's just that all in all the movie fails sadly. It goes off on tangents trying to capture more of the books than can be fathomed in a film of 109 minutes and throws in it's own sub-plots that I wasn't quite fond of. My humble opinion ultimately would be to stick with the early 80's mini-series as that will likely be the definitive adaption that we'll likely see on either the big or small screen.
My Grade: C+
My Grade: C+
- movieman_kev
- Feb 12, 2006
- Permalink
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $50,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $51,085,416
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $21,103,203
- May 1, 2005
- Gross worldwide
- $104,478,416
- Runtime1 hour 49 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
- 2.35 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
Top Gap
What is the streaming release date of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) in India?
Answer