Verdict: I liked more than I feared I would, but didn't love. The love story between Arthur and Trillian was necessary to give the picaresque an arc, but the two don't interact enough for it to work, and Arthur's character is never the master of his own fate. This was somewhat true in the books, too, but it somehow bothered me less there. A number of scenes suffered from flabby editing. Some slapstick didn't work. I liked Rockwell's Zaphod, and Mos Def was acceptable as Ford Prefect. The Jim Henson puppets were quite nice. Adams was a writer who had problems with endings, and the movie does the same. Matt identifies other problems.

Pitch-perfect was Alan Rickman as Marvin. It's a shame that Alan Rickman is behind a nauseating British play (via Frum) lionizing Rachel Corrie and demonizing Israel: I'm going to have to stop liking him, plus it reminds me of the pervasive anti-Semitism that has previously made me reluctant to visit Europe. As the Jerusalem Post points out, no one in Britain cares about the death of another Rachel, 16-year-old Rachel Thaler, a British citizen killed in a Jerusalem pizza parlor by a suicide bomber who might very well have gotten his weapons from the smuggling tunnels Rachel Corrie attempted to protect.