If you're like me, having read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in junior high (and numerous time subsequently!), you'll likely be a tough critic to attempts to bring the book to the big screen. Fortunately, though many details are missed, the movie does capture the zany fun of the book. (Perhaps partially due to the fact that Adams did work on the screenplay before his death in 2001.)

A good cast romps through the well- known antics of the mixed group of humans and aliens (and robots), after the destruction of the earth due to the building of an interstellar freeway. Martin Freeman (BBC's 'The Office' alumni) is most especially effective here as Arthur Dent, reprising his familiar self-effacing everyman character (As only a Brit can, it seems). I also very much enjoyed Sam Rockwell as the alien Zaphod Beeblebrox, and a cameo from John Malkovitch was very welcome.

I was pleased to see that the bad guys of the piece, the gruesome alien race known as the Vogons, were created with puppetry, not cgi. While cgi certainly has it's place, in comedy close-ups, the puppets did a far superior job, avoiding the notoriously bad Jar Jar effect. My one major compliant with the film was the gratuitously added romance. While certainly hinted at in the books, the liaison tends to undercut the spirit of silliness and satire that has make the books so beloved.