Checked out the film today - pretty good and not too Hollywoodized
. Liked Freeman in the role of Arthur Dent and Rickman\'s voice adds just the right sardonic humour to Marvin. The Vogons are nicely done, thanks, no doubt, to Jim Henson\'s lot, though didn\'t like Zaphod at all - he\'s meant to be an egomaniac, but a loveable one. Rockwell just didn\'t cut it for me, no doubt as Mark Wing Davey had the role off pat, and could never be replaced. Also the retractable second head idea was pretty crap - it needs to be permanent - and the CGI of the hand was poor. Helen Mirren was a waste of time - call me sexist if you like, but Deep Thought HAS to be a man (and why did they cut so many of DT\'s great lines?)
Back on the plus side, the Magarathean workshop SFX were excellent, Mos Def wasn\'t too grating as Ford and Zooey Deschanel was a rather gorgeous, intelligent Trillian, so much better than the blonde bimbo who played the part in the TV series and had not fitted everyone\'s image of her from the radio and books. On the whole, the script is pretty faithful to the radio scripts (which I just reread last week), though suffered a little from editing it down to keep the film to under two hours.
So overall,a good 7.5/10 - 8.5/10 or even 9/10 if Zaphod had been better. Hope they make the next one.
Oh yes, make sure you stay for the end-titles, there\'s some more of the book in the middle of them.
