Let me begin by admitting to you that sometimes I exaggerate when it comes to my movie reviews. There, I said it. I know it's shocking, but it's much more fun to criticize movies than to praise them, and at times some of my righteous indignation is souped up a bit for effect. I'd like to assure you that this is not the case today. None of the following vitriol is in any way fabricated; this is one hundred percent pure disdain. The only reason I am dignifying this particular film with a blog mention is that I hope to prevent others from making the mistake I made. Do not see this film. If someone straps you to a chair in front of the screen and pries your eyelids open, force yourself to develop cataracts or something. Seriously. Because if you watch it, it will be the end of the pure childlike soul within you.

The story of my disillusionment began when Nick and I rented movies a few nights ago. We were feeling silly, and so we narrowed down the field to two selections, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Womb Raider: An Erotic Parody. I cannot express in words how much I wish we had opted for the campy soft-core, because watching the former made me feel like I would never be clean again. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was terrible. I really can't explain how terrible it was (although of course I'm going to try). To begin with, I was bored. I was so bored. A mind-numbing, chew-off-your-own-arm kind of bored. About an hour in, I had a wonderful hopeful moment in which I became convinced that the film was nearly over, followed by the crushing realization that that wasn't the case at all. To put it bluntly, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy doesn't tell a story. It just sort of vomits on itself.

Watching this film, I was reminded how much we take for granted that our modern storytellers understand the rudiments of filmmaking. As a general rule, I love bad movies, but even the goofiest Bruce Campbell vehicle has a million times more narrative structure and continuity than this. Hitchhiker's was uneven, choppy, and often nonsensical. The editing was terrible—it's as if a monkey got into the viewing room and had an epileptic fit with a pair of scissors. There were scathingly funny lines (straight from the book) that fell flat because of the timing, and scene transitions that came barrelling at you with all the subtlety of a Mack truck. I kept getting flashbacks to the last film that made me feel this way—Dungeons and Dragons (the only thing I liked about that film was the scene where Jeremy Irons is shrieking from the tower, defying the pitiless gods who refused to save him from this godawful role).

It's hard for me to say really what went wrong. I desperately wanted this movie to succeed. I even knew that they were going to change some things from the book, and I had made my peace with that. That's what happened with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, after all, and needless to say I was cool with the result because it captured Tolkien's spirit so well. But Hitchhiker's disappointed me from the first moment. And why, you may ask, was that? Well, I don't think the problem was the cast. Sam Rockwell was hysterical as Zaphod Beeblebrox...exactly as I imagined him. Mos Def was a decent Ford Prefect. Zooey Deschanel was an okay choice for Trillian (I have adored her in other films because of her caustic, slightly bored manner of delivery). And Martin Freeman was good as Arthur, that average, bumbling, yet passingly intelligent guy who is doomed to be a fish out of water for the rest of his life. Oh, and then there's Marvin, the manic-depressive robot. Marvin was voiced by the incomparable Alan Rickman, for whom I've harbored a passionate crush for lo these many years (ever since the first Die Hard...how broken is that?). The voice was great, but I didn't like the way this Marvin looked at all. I tried to be okay with it, I really did. But that weird roundness of his snowman body just didn't work for me. If there's one thing we know about robots, it's that they are built for efficiency, and there is nothing efficient about a cybernetic Wilford Brimley waddling around and taking up valuable real estate on a space ship.

Other things rankled me, too. The plot was altered dramatically to include a love story between Arthur and Trillian. Sigh. We all knew this was going to happen, because filmmakers don't trust women enough to believe we'd go see a movie without romantic overtones. I guess that's why I love the Alien series. Because of the romantic overtones. Same with Apocalypse Now. I watched that for the kissing parts. I'm a girl, you see, and I just won't be interested in your stupid little hitchhiker movie until you introduce some kind of ridiculous and improbable love story. Waa waaa waaa! Make the Arthur doll kiss the Trillian doll! Waa waaa waaa waa waaa!

Idiots.

So yes, I knew the Arthur-Trillian hook-up was coming, and I had determined to make the best of it. The presentation of the love story, however, proved to be uglier than I thought. We're supposed to believe that these two are soul mates because he was the only one at a costume party to realize she was dressed as Darwin. 'See, how he really gets her?' we ask ourselves rhetorically. 'Man, that dude certainly is in tune with that chick.' The thing is, the Arthur we know and love from the books didn't really 'get' any of the other characters, Trillian least of all. Their love story doesn't make sense here. I'll go a step further—it's nauseating. To the filmmaker's credit, however, at least he had the sense not to subject us to some terrifying soft-focus bedroom scene that later could have been repurposed by fundamentalists as proof of the existence of hell.

Some of the things they tried in the movie were really interesting. The claymation sequence, for example. The musical number at the first was daring, too, but it was also so precious and off-putting that I began to indulge in some unhealthy speculations about rat poison. I kept thinking that if Terry Gilliam had made this movie, this weirdness could have worked. But not here. Nothing works here, no matter how cool the concept. It's like some kind of crazy cinematic black hole that gobbles up everything thrown at it. You can throw cool actors at it, ingenious situations, and a whole spectrum of fantastic special effects. But it's still a black hole. It still sucks.

Admittedly, parts of it were not so bad when taken alone. I loved seeing how they rendered Magrathea, with its infinite factory floor on which planets are sculpted. I loved the way they presented Deep Thought and the two wise leaders who approached it. I even thought the Vogons worked pretty well. But the rest of it, especially the parts in which the original story was modified, did not work, and I can't envision an alternate universe in which they would. It's as if they said, 'let's take the Lew Wallace book, Ben-Hur. But instead of a Judean aristocrat who is wrongly enslaved, we'll have a cyborg kung-fu fighter with metal legs as big as tree trunks. And instead of chariot races, we'll have the guys racing around a tank of invisible sharks.' Okay, that would actually be kind of awesome. See what I mean? I can't even come up with a metaphorical situation that is as bad as this movie.

Another thing that really got to me was how they transformed the work of this wonderfully cynical British mind into something very sunny and American. First of all, only the actors portraying Arthur and Marvin are actually British; the rest speak in typical American voices. This is a problem. It should have been obvious to everyone that it would be a problem. The humor of Douglas Adams is quintessentially British, and the fact that people all over the world love his books doesn't mean that they can be removed from their cultural context with jokes intact. (This is why Americans sound like idiots when we repeat Monty Python routines.) There is a subtletly to his writing that just doesn't work when the characters are American. Second, the core philosophy of the books was sanitized and sprayed with a sickening potpourri scent. In this movie, everything (and everyone) turns out happy in the end, and Earth is restored to its former glory with its inhabitants intact. Um...what? The books all hinge on the idea that unthinkable things happen all the time, even things as unthinkable as our home planet being destroyed to make way for a bypass. To make it so the universe magically reverts back to what it was before the bad stuff happened is completely counter to Douglas Adams's own belief system. The only part I can think of where his original philosophy was evident in the film was the part where the missiles turn into a whale and a flower pot, and this is only because I don't think they understood the significance of the scene. You remember: the whale materializes in mid-air, falls through the stratosphere, and has about 30 seconds to come to terms with its existence before it smashes into the ground. It's so funny, and at the same time, so sad. You see, that was what the man's life philosophy was about. That was the source of his humor. He amused us by serving up the darkness and vicissitudes of the human condition with a wry smile. Remember, this is not a man who believed in any sort of heaven. He believed our existence on earth is all we have, as brief, confusing, and frought with heartbreaks as it is. Taking all that into consideration, there is nothing else to do but laugh. What an interesting movie it could have been if they had stayed faithful to that premise. But no, what we get instead is a movie promoting a shiny happy cultist's view of the world in which people always hug after arguments and puppy love conquers all. Yuck.

So finally the movie ended, and then a smug little blurb appeared on the screen: "For Douglas." As a writer, this caused me physical pain. I can just imagine if someone took one of my books and did something like this to it, and then at the end threw me some props because I guess I should be honored by how much they fracked up my story. I'm not exaggerating. What they did to Douglas Adams's beloved book was so perverse that everyone associated with it should be required to notify their community at once (they should also be encouraged to move if their homes are within three blocks of a school). Wherever Douglas is, I hope to god he didn't see this film. I hope he was out getting space donuts or something when this movie was in theaters. I hope the other dead people don't tell him, either, because he deserves better than to know that Hollywood repaid his amazing gift for storytelling with this travesty.