DOUGLAS ADAMS’S stroke of genius was to make planet Earth an infinitely less important place by blowing it to smithereens during the first radio broadcast of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in 1978. He spent the next 20 years wondering if the play (and subsequent book) would make a decent movie before he suddenly expired in 2001, aged 49, without the benefit of a hard answer.
I suspect he would have been flattered by Garth Jennings’s lavish film debut. The graphics are fabulous. The aliens are deliciously grotesque. And Martin Freeman (from The Office) is inspired casting as Arthur Dent, the grumpy Middle Englander who is beamed on-board a space ship with his alien friend, Ford Prefect (Mos Def), a mere instant before the world is vaporised. The last human being alive is still dressed in his pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers when, minutes later, the two hikers are booted into space by the blubbery Vogons for the sheer hell of it.

The absurd logic is faithfully served by Jennings. Despite pots of American money the film is pleasingly British. Who better to talk us through the illustrated quotes from the Guide than Stephen Fry? It’s a droll stroll for the pompous narrator, and his Victorian tones are pitch-perfect. You can’t fault the Python-esque moments of brilliance, and the wobbly Doctor Who sets.

But science and Hollywood play fresh tricks on this vintage comedy. The film is cluttered with new bits and pieces of plot that Hitchhiker fans might find hard to digest.

No one disputes that Arthur and Ford are duly scooped from certain death by the most famous spaceship yet invented, The Heart of Gold. Or the fact that their saviours are Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox (the ultra-cool President of the Galaxy, who is on the run after stealing the ship) and his glamorous sidekick, Trillian (Zooey Deschanel). But the romance between Arthur and Trillian has the commercial texture of a Richard Curtis pudding: puffed up, over-sweet and none too convincing. It coughs and splutters like a large, sick second-hand car.

The gang is chased across the Universe by squadrons of Vogons, elephantine civil servants with deformed, piggy faces. They are tortured, shot at, and bribed. John Malkovich plays a new villain, Humma Kavula, a decidedly sore loser in his failed bid to become President of the Galaxy, and a cult leader whose planet worships used handkerchiefs. He is a creepy metal centipede from the waist down, and when he takes off his glasses to polish his eyeballs he reveals two black holes in his face.

You can see the wisdom of trying to cultivate a more conventional storyline. What often goes missing is the cruel and godless perspective: the keen misanthropy, the splinters of cynicism, and Adams’s quixotic desire to solve life’s gigantic mysteries.

The problem is that the film is too episodic for homogeneous drama. Major characters often look puny and seriously exposed. Rockwell’s two-headed President, Zaphod, is a one-note wonder. The way his second head pops out of his neck, as if someone flipped the lid on a Zippo lighter, is ingenious. But I doubt that even Owen Wilson could have salvaged this schizoid vanity case: the rock-star flamboyance barely disguises the fact that both heads are spectacularly careless, to the point of dim.

Marvin (voiced by Alan Rickman), the depressed android robot with a brain the size of a planet, is perhaps the most serious disappointment. His lines have been shaved, he looks decidedly plastic, and he blunders around like a large golf ball with legs.

And yet there are swooning moments of Heath Robinson magic. The hops through Time and Space, determined by a device called the Infinite Improbability Drive, temporarily turn the cast into the oddest household items: sofas, and at one unforgettable point, knitted dolls. Yes, students will love it.

This is meat and drink for Jennings, who earned his stripes making music videos and sharp television adverts. The discovery of Magrethea, the mythical factory where planets are custom-built for super-rich clients, will doubtless launch the next generation of Guinness promos.

Here, our heroes manage to avoid being nuked by accidentally turning a pair of guided missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias. The whale’s thoughts (voiced by Bill Bailey) about the meaning of life before it hits the ground are worth the price of entry alone.

Bill Nighy’s ancient codger, Slartibartfast, a designer of coastlines who has won prizes for his Norwegian fjörds, gives a guided tour of the factory to Arthur that is almost a mini metaphor for the film itself. The two set off on what looks like a cheap and rickety fairground ghost train. They end up flashing past a dazzling selection of brave new worlds — none, of course, quite as strange or insane as their own.

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