Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: Blu-ray
Brand: Touchstone
EAN: 0786936725360
Format: Color
Item Dimensions: Array
Label: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
MPN: DISBR53530
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2007-01-23
Running Time: 109
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Touchstone
Theatrical Release Date: 2005

Climb aboard for wacky, irreverent fun with The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on Blu-ray’s high definition disc. Based on Douglas Adams’ best-selling novel, this "fascinating, funny and relentlessly awe-inspiring" (UPN-TV) movie soars to cosmic heights in this stellar new format. Seconds before Earth is destroyed, mild-mannered Arthur Dent is whisked into space by a friendly alien in human form to search for answers to the mystery of life, the universe and everything. Experience thrilling special effects and intergalactic misadventures in astonishing 1080p, and feel the impact of every supernova with 5.1 48 kHz, 16-bit uncompressed audio. It’s a wild, out-of-this-world ride with Blu-ray™ High Definition.

Don't panic! After twenty years stuck in development (a mere blink compared to how long it takes to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has finally been turned into a movie. Following the radio play, TV series, commemorative towel, and books, this latest installment in the sci-fi-comedy franchise is based on the screenplay and detailed notes by Douglas Adams.

Hitching a ride.

For those unfamiliar with the story, everyman Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) wakes up one morning to discover that his house is set to be demolished to make room for a bypass. Little does he know the entire planet Earth is also set to be destroyed for an interplanetary bypass by the Vogons, a hideous and bureaucratic race of aliens realized in the film by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Whisked off the planet by his best friend, alien-in-disguise Ford Prefect (Mos Def), Dent embarks on a goofy jaunt across the galaxy accompanied by his trusty Hitchhiker's Guide, which looks like a really fancy PDA.

The guide itself provides some of the funniest bits of the movie, little animated shorts that explain the ludicrous life forms and extraterrestrial phenomena our heroes encounter. Along the way Arthur meets the two-headed party animal/president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell) and develops an unrequited crush on fellow earthling Trillian (Zooey Deschanel). The creatures and sets are inspired and answer to the sci-fi fan's primal need to see lots and lots of cool stuff. In particular, there's John Malkovich's creepy, CGI-enhanced Humma Kavula. He's a guru leading a religion that worships the gigantic nose that allegedly sneezed the universe into existence (naturally all their prayers end not with "Amen" but with "Bless you.") The aliens the team encounters are inspired creations, eminently worthy of action figure-ification, and the sets belie an attention to detail worthy of freeze-framing. Fans of the other Hitchhiker manifestations, namely the British TV series, will be amused by a number of in-jokes sprinkled throughout the movie.

Concept art: The Heart of Gold pod on the planet Vogsphere

Where the story stumbles is in the telling--as books, the Hitchhiker's Guide was foremost about goofy and brilliant ideas that raised questions about our place in the universe while getting a laugh. The cast seems at times bewildered, at least when Sam Rockwell isn't picking pieces of scenery out of his teeth, perhaps a natural reaction to an adaptation of a book with no traditional plot. The movie has enough trouble figuring out how to get the characters from one fantastical location to the next that Adams's funniest concepts often feel left in the dust. While the reverence the filmmakers felt toward Adams's legacy is apparent, one wonders what we could have expected had the creator of this science fiction universe lived to see it with his own eyes. -- Ryan Boudinot

A Guide to the Guide

The Soundtrack	The Radio Play (CD)	The TV Series
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Deluxe Edition)	The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Paperback)	The Filming of the Douglas Adams Classic (book)

Interviews with The Cast and Director

Watch our interviews with the cast and director of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and find out what they think of other DVDs and books: high bandwidth low bandwidth

Customer Rating:
Summary: I Loved This!
Comment: This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. There were Doctor Who elements, The Fifth Element elements and Monty Python elements all wrapped up into one quirky but thoughtful and entertaining film. Despite the many random events that take place there is a peculiar order to things... it all makes sense... eventually! Great characters and dialog. And I loved the song So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (lol)! Definitely Brit-humor.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The art of the humor of a cup of tea
Comment: That's probably not a masterpiece, not even as good as the radio show. But it is good. The main handicap for this film is that everything that was pure imagination on the radio show has to become visible, visual, hence no longer requiring the audience's imagination but satisfying their visual curiosity. Then of course this film has to use visual surprises and visual absurd hiatuses or oxymora. Thus the main character has to be in his pajamas all along since he was "captured" in them. A little bit skimpy for long distance travelling. Then I must admit they did a tremendous job at finding incongruous and funny situations even if some of them are trite, like being master-minded by plain mice, though they look cute our masters in their little fragile beings, and all the more fragile when they are crushed as flat as a cartoon drawing by some kind of torturing device. Apart from that it does not have any kind of deep meaning. It is all funny and it does not aim at being anything else, British funny of course, so rather just silly or funny ah ah, but not hilarious or brain meddling funny. The radio show was a lot more mysterious and brainy because it was entirely relying on the words and it was at times extremely witty. But it is quite some entertainment indeed.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Pathetic at every level
Comment: I have never been more disappointed in a film I expected to enjoy. This boring, beyond childish, piece of wasted energy should be flushed immediately before infection occurs.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Comment: Great movie. You will want to watch it more than once. So many things are going on that you see new things you missed the first time around. A must have for your DVD collection

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid
Comment: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is one of those films that seems a lot better if one has not read the source material it's based upon- in this case the series of Hitchhiker books by Douglas Adams, the BBC radio shows, or the 1970s BBC television series of the same name. This was manifest immediately to me, as one who'd seen the repeats of the tv show on PBS, but never read the books. In just briefly skimming the online critical consensus this seems confirmed, for rarely does a film elicit such widely divergent reactions. Those critics who came to this film fresh invariably thought it was very good, while those with prior Hitchhiker bonafides thought this new version, by first time director Garth Jennings, who made his name in music videos, was horrible. Oddly, even though I fall into the latter camp, I thought it was a mildly amusing film, in the tradition of Mel Brooks' Spaceballs, and it was scripted by Karey Kirkpatrick, who wrote the delightful claymation comedy Chicken Run, with help from Adams, before he died in 2000. This enjoyment I felt may have been due to the fact that although I enjoyed the old BBC series it's been at least twenty years since I saw the show.
The problem with the film is not really the film's problem, but that the books have such a devoted cult following that even the slightest deviations from the canon seem to be taken personally by fans and critics alike, even though all basic tales must adapt to whatever medium they are in. As long as they capture the essence of the work, that's all that is required. And the essence is a work of humor somewhere between Jonathan Swift and Kurt Vonnegut.... Overall, even if one is not too thrilled with the film, the DVD extras make the effort a little more worthwhile. This zeitgeist may explain the many cameos in the film, by the likes of Jason Schwartzman and John Malkovich, although they are really given nothing to work with. Yet, Slartibartfast's philosophy, `I'd rather be happy than right,' is the sort that, if applied to the film's many disappointed cultist detractors, is hard not to find some resonance with, even if, like him, real happiness has not been reached. Somehow, though, I think Douglas Adams would find their circumstance a hoot.

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