Hitchhiker's Guide to the Sharalaxy

I always meant to go and see this one at the cinema, but as usual, I never quite got there.

Having read the posthumously-published collection of Douglas Adams' essays and so on, I was prepared for this. HHGTTG has been through radio play, book, TV show and now movie forms, and there are differences in each one. As the man himself was at pains to point out, they're not meant to be slavishly adherent to whatever you believe the original version is.

Obviously this upsets the fanboys, pedants and trainspotters, but if it's how the author intended things to be, sweet as.

Overall, I thought it was great, with plenty of Adamsisms and the vast majority of plot elements and characters being recognisable from previous incarnations of the story.

Ford Prefect was an inspired piece of casting, and naturally upset some people. Actually, I thought all the cast were pretty great, with the exception of Zooey Deschanel. She was OK, but seemed a bit vacant some of the time. Her character was not quite what I remember from the books (yes, I remember what I said about them not having to be the same), to me her part of the storyline got a bit hollywoodised.

Still, D.A. may well have intended this as some kind of giant joke on the rest of us, and it's nowhere near enough to ruin the movie.

So, give it a go, it's better than bad, worse than excellent, and if you haven't read any of D.A.'s books, give one a go too.