"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Head-to-Head Review -Thaddeus

Spending a Thursday struggling to re-read one of your very favorite books as you sit in the waiting room of a Ford dealership for hours on end, accompanied by all manner of frumpy, rasping strangers, with "The Tyra Banks Show" and "The View" blared unrestrained from the nearby TV set is a bang-up way of simulating a severe migrane or a low-level stroke, if you ever happen to need one.

But, as Arthur Dent once said, "I never could get the hang of Thursdays."

...

Of all the people I wish weren't dead, Douglas Adams is likely the cleverest.

Him or Mark Twain.

And if you don't know who he is -- Adams obviously, as not knowing who Mark Twain is means you're basically done with -- then you ought to go to your nearest supplier of fine literature and snatch up a copy of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Honestly, the collected editions of the complete series are so cheap that walking past them without already owning a copy is roughly equal to swallowing and fully digesting a crisp, ten-dollar bill.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" tells the story of Arthur Dent, an unassuming Englishman who is whisked away from Earth mere moments before its destruction and into a Universe that hardly knew it was ever there in the first place. Or at least that's where it starts. And while I'm sure that sound very serious to you overly terrestrial types, it happens to be funnier than anything else you've read.

Douglas Adams used to write sketches for Monty Python. If this means nothing to you... go away.

Five books and some change, all told, "The Hitchhiker's Guide" series is absurdly funny through and through -- excepting the bits where it isn't -- as well as a remarkably quick read. Plus, a cursory familiarity with "The Guide" lets you in on a large percentage of inside jokes between nerds around the world.

Fun stuff.

So, now that we're through with the glowing, unabashed praise portion of the review, let's talk about the movie.

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" hit the silver screen in 2005. It's frightfully uneven in pacing and pales in comparison to the original book (which itself was based on a radio series that I've not yet been exposed to). I'd seen it once already, back when it was in theaters, but viewing it immediately after reading the book only served to underscore the glaring differences.

Priceless jokes are watered down or altogether missing, Hollywood turns the romance dial up to 11 and the ending is far fluffier than it ought to be.

At the same time, there's still that quirky sense of humor and plenty of background details for obsessive fans to latch onto. Plus, Alan Rickman's portrayal of Marvin the Paranoid Android is fantastic. So not all is lost.

I could try to complain about glaring differences in plot structure, but the "Hitchhiker's Guide" story has jumped from radio to print to TV to video games to comics to whatever other media you can think of throughout it's life cycle, and each time Douglas Adams has turned continuity on it's ear... so it's rather moot.

At the end of the day, the film version is good for some laughs. But if you want sustained, brilliant hilarity, you're going to have to crack a book.

-Thad out.