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Slightly underwhelming 'Hitchhiker's Guide' veers toward narrower course

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes the planet Earth as "mostly harmless."

The filmmakers got it mostly right.

Touchstone Pictures 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' B- Director: Garth Jennings Starring: Bill Bailey, Anna Chancellor, Warwick Davis, Martin Freeman, John Malkovich Run time: 110 minutes Release date: April 29, 2005 Rating: PG for thematic elements, action and mild language. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime [an error occurred while processing this directive]

The long-awaited movie version of Douglas Adams' cult classic stays more or less true to the source material, a Monty Python-style sci-fi satire that follows a passive Englishman on a wacky space adventure.

That should come as a relief to fans, allowing them to take the Guide's reassuring cover inscription, "Don't Panic," to heart.

The film hits upon many of Hitchhiker's hallmarks, from the importance of towels to the significance of the number 42, while condensing Adams' frequently digressive story line into a fairly coherent plot. However, it stumbles a bit in sustaining the author's very British sense of witty irreverence, resorting instead to slapstick and romance.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy originally was a 1978 radio comedy series that writer Adams then adapted into several best-selling novels, a BBC television miniseries and a computer game. Adams wrote a first draft of the film script before his death in 2001 at age 49, and he shares screenplay credit with Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run).

Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) awakes one morning to find that his house is about to be bulldozed to make way for a highway bypass. That turns out to be the least of Arthur's troubles when he discovers that his best friend, Ford Prefect (Mos Def), is actually an alien from outer space and the Earth, like his home, is about to be destroyed by a Vogon construction fleet making way for an interstellar bypass.

Ford, a researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide, hitches them a ride on a passing Vogon ship seconds before the Earth goes kaboom.

After escaping from the bad-tempered, bureaucratic Vogons, they are rescued by the Heart of Gold, a stolen spaceship piloted by the galaxy's smarmy, self-absorbed president, Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell).

Also aboard are Trisha McMillan, aka Trillian (Zoey Deschanel), an Earth girl whom Arthur fell for at a party, before she was spirited away by Zaphod; and Marvin the Paranoid Android (the voice of Alan Rickman), a chronically depressed robot.

Together they embark on a series of adventures that center on the answer to "life, the universe and everything."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy delivers more chuckles than laughs, but it should please fans despite falling somewhat short of expectations.

Directed by Garth Jennings, who makes his feature debut, the film has a charming, low-budget feel that recalls the original Star Wars trilogy, especially in the alien puppets designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

The Guide itself is brought to life in amusing 2-D animations, narrated by Stephen Fry.

The British casting is spot-on, particularly The Office's Freeman and Bill Nighy as planetary construction engineer Slartibartfast.

However, Rockwell's Zaphod is a manic moron, unlike the original, and Def and Deschanel appear to be lost in space.

The Hitchhiker's Guide still plays best on radio or the printed page, where your imagination is given free rein. But the film version isn't bad, especially compared to the BBC TV series or, even worse, Vogon poetry.