I just had to look this up on capalert http://www.capalert.com/now_playing.htm.
I think my favourite (along with Wanton Violence: Destruction of the Earth) is:
Sexual Immorality: Woman in towel only.
Would have been a lot worst if she didn’t know where it was…
Alias and I took the little one (age 8) to see it and had no problems. You don’t see the Zaphod surgery, just a red stained neckerchief afterwards and the second head placed on a hula girl bobblehead. Entirely bloodless. No really adult situations. It may be a bit on the chatty side if she’s easily bored though.
I’d feel safe calling it entirely kid friendly.
got back from my second viewing, and it turns out the car Ford was trying to introduce himself to WAS a Ford Prefect!
Brilliant!
(for some reason i remembered the car looking more modern on my first viewing last night…)
We went to go see it at the midnight showing. It was quite cool, no kiddies (no offense to the parents of course. We went at that time specifically to avoid kiddies).
There were a few times when it got over the top, and even silly. However, generally it was fairly entertaining. I am a Douglas Addams die-hard, and even I enjoyed it…I thought the actor who played Zaphord could have toned it down a lot. And they made a little too much about the romance, although the way the mice end Arthur’s silly romantic speech was excellent.
I loved Slartibartfast. The Vogons were too cool, and so was Marvin.
Other than that, their is an absolutely brilliant scene at one point where they use the Improbability Drive. Those of who have seen it will instantly know what I’m talking about, and I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone.
Just got back from seeing it. A few bits of laugh-out-loud funny, but mostly just pleasantly amused. Slightly overpriced at full price, but not excessively so.
Loved the Guide, Marvin, and Eddie. The regular characters were fun, though I had a hard time following the voices at first, and Ford’s “indifferent slacker” persona took me a bit of time to grok. My brother thought it appealed more to die-hard H2G2 fans than to folks unfamiliar with the series, and I sorta agree, but it’s still goofy fun anyway.
Loved the yarn bit, and Trillian’s “I’m a woman” gag got decent guffaws at my showing. Slartibartfast’s planetary workshop was awesome.
And to MacTech, given the Vogon sense of aesthetics, the poetry appreciation chairs were perfectly in character, IMO.
3.5 thumbs out of 5.
Jonathan - The viewing I went to last night was filled to the brim with children in the 7 - 11 year range, with some outlayers in either direction. (Plus a heck of a lot of adult fans, of course.) All of them seemed to enjoy it immensely. Your five year old would probably be fine.
My husband, who has never read the books despite my nagging, enjoyed the movie as much as I did, which thrilled the heck out of me. His only complaint is that he didn’t understand the towel bits. That bothered me too - why make it one of the biggest themes in the movie if you’re not going to spend 30 seconds on the guide entry?
That about sums up what thought of the film. 
I enjoyed the movie. Now I have to go watch it a second time, to see the post-credits stuff. Thanks for the info!
Saw it last night, and enjoyed it immensely. Harborwolf, look!ninjas, myself, and my mother have all read the book, and felt that it was a fine adaptation considering that the book doesn’t really have a central plot as in premise-conflict-resolution. I read on IMDB that Douglas Adams was aware of and approved of all of the changes to the plot, so I guess that makes it okay, right? 
I absolutely loved the yarn bit. I cracked up.
I thought Sam Rockwell’s Zaphod was over the top, but it worked for me because he’s just so great in the role. He reminded me of Bush and Clinton combined into one egomaniacal, rather dim character.
I LOVED Slartibartfast. He was perfect.
Mos Def really surprised me in his interpretation of Ford. I thought he was wonderfully alien. His outfit, his gestures, his expressions, and his wonderful towel use were just perfect. He’s cute too.
Ford says “Belgium”
Just before Trillion gets kidnapped, while they’re getting shot at, Ford says it as he runs to Arthur where they are hiding for cover.
Also from CapAlert:
Ah-choo!!
Really really fun. I went with some friends who, as it turned out, hadn’t read the books, aside from one who said he had read part of the first book years ago. All but two in my group brought their towels along, and I was kind of surprised that I didn’t see more towels in the audience.
I too thought Tricia was awfully cute. But, wasn’t she supposed to be British too? Her accent sounded very American to me. In fact, I thought she sounded a bit like Victoria Jackson.
The Vogons were superb, Marvin was very good.
My biggest complaint was that it was very difficult to understand a lot of Arthur’s and Ford’s dialogue early in the movie. I don’t know if it was the movie’s fault, or the fact that the theater had the volume too low (I hate it when the volume is too low - when I watched This Is Spinal Tap back in '84, the volume was so low that the audience laughter at one joke kept burying the next joke.)
Inotherwords, Emerald, all the reasons I read it in the first place :).
I have to say I’ve not seen it yet. Been trying to decide if I should or whether it would just annoy me, and having read all the reviews here and elsewhere…I still don’t know. Just gives new meaning to the term “mixed reviews”…including ones that completely contradict each other (well, perhaps somewhere mr. Adams is smiling over that).
But before I see it I still have one prejudical (pre judging, before actually seeing) complaint; Ford Prefect is American???
Black maybe, but American?..the whole joke is he took his name from something he thought would be inconspicuous. Meaning he based his assumptions on the British. Meaning he’s not going to choose an American accent if he wants to blend in. Just ruins the whole joke it does!
Well that’s my last purist complant before I actually see it…have to go now, I’ve just been informed the orginal is on PBS right now…
I saw it tonight and I liked it. I might have a few nitpicks but most have already mentioned them. There were plenty of good parts and laughs so it wasn’t terrible. I laughed pretty hard at the yarn bit and the “that won’t work on me, I’m already a woman” comment.
Who is this “God” person, anyway?
I don’t know Larry, but he made a hell of a lot of mistakes, the first and foremost of which was creating the Universe.
At least he apologized for that one later on.
Yeah, that was a bad move.
Saw it tonight (with towel) and absolutely loved it. Far better than I thought they ever could have done with it. Most of the bits they left out (like “Mostly Harmless” just wouldn’t have worked as well on screen (though they should have done the jaguar line). On the other hand, they did lots of things that worked brilliantly on film, that just couldn’t have been done as well in a book–the extra Vogon scenes, the way they did the Improbability drive (especially that bit), the way Arthur met Ford–all brilliant and in keeping with the feel and humor of the radio series/books, but movie-ideas, not radio/book-ideas translated to film. IOW, it felt mostly like an original movie, not just a translation of something else.
I also loved the design. Everything looked original, not just typical Sci-Fi props. The guns didn’t look particularly “gun-y” the spaceship didn’t look particularly “spaceship-y”, but why would they? They’re alien designs! (I especially liked the guns. Did you notice Zaphod’s pistol? Perfectly functional looking and recognizable, but unlike any gun I’ve ever seen. Same thing with the Vogon guns, but in a totally different style.) Marvin (though I had my doubts when I saw the stills) was great too. I definitely got the impression that he could have looked cool, if he’d just held himself a little better.
The only thing I didn’t like much was the love story, and Arthur’s ridiculous speech, but I think DNA always wanted something more like that, he just couldn’t write women or romance very well. (Unfortunately, neither could the scriptwriter.) Despite that, I did love Trillian. This was her best incarnation in any medium so far. But what was with Zaphod and the Vice President?
No, she was specifially mentioned as being American in the orginal.
Saw it tonight, and I liked it. Much better than I expected, but quite not as good as it could have been; I’m curious to see if any of the deleted bits ("Beware of the leopard, “mostly harmless”) end up on the DVD.
Magrithea, the destruction of Earth, the improbability drive, Marvin… all were very well executed. (When I was younger, I had a scarf made of the same multicolored yarn as was in that scene – I’ll never see it the same way again. )
For those of you who’ve listened to the radio series, the introduction of the book is a very nice reference: After the earth is imploded, the camera tilts up to a view of starry space… and those banjo strums start as the dark metallic edges start to zoom into view! Voiceover, and the music crescendos as the edges rotate to reveal the book. The crescendo peaks an orchestrated version of the main “Journey of the Sorcerer” theme as The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is revealed in large red letters printed across the front. Sent chills down my spine, it did.
I loved the way the Vogons were depicted – weren’t they designed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop? To me, they came across as twentieth-century English bureaucrats with nineteenth century fasion, almost as if Jabba the Hut was turned into a Dickensian character, then plopped down in the middle of Brazil. Yes, their bureaucracy was key to the humor in the destruction-of-earth scene in the book and radio series, but the movie really drove the point home. The whole Vogsphere subplot was a welcome addition for this very reason. “You’ll need a Presidential prisoner release. Those are the blue forms.”
