It’s been a radio series, a book, a computer game and a TV series. Now Douglas Adams’ enormously popular sci-fi comedy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a movie.
Londoner, Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman, who played Tim in TV’s The Office) is having a very bad – if not downright strange – day. His house is about to be bulldozed, he discovers his best friend, Ford Prefect (Mos Def) is actually an alien from the planet, Betelgeuse as well as a writer for the aforementioned Guide – and Earth is about to be demolished to make way for an intergalactic expressway! News of Arthur’s soon-to-be bulldozed home pales in comparison with that last piece of information.
Saved by his friend before the world explodes, Arthur hitches a ride on a passing spacecraft and sets out on a journey across the galaxy in which nothing is what it seems. Among those he encounters are the President of the Galaxy, the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox (Sam Rockwell); Slartibartfast (Bill Nighy); Trillian (Zooey Deschanel); Marvin the Paranoid Android (Warwick Davis and the voice of Alan Rickman), Questular Rontock (Anna Chancellor) and a religious cult leader named Humma Kavula (John Malkovich) – created especially for the movie.
Arthur learns that a towel is the most useful thing in the universe, finds the meaning of life and discovers that everything he needs to know can be found in one book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.