OK, panic ‘cos they’ve made a film of the fantastic hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams and …it’s well…sort of okay but nothing special.

Arthur Dent (Freeman) is the stereotypical Englishman who discovers that his friend Ford Prefect (Def) is in fact an alien and the Earth is about to be demolished. Kinda messes up breakfast that does. So off they set hitchhiking across the strange Universe.

Disappointing is the feeling. The books are far richer, and the TV series was miles better. Marvin the paranoid android comes across as almost happy compared to his previous incarnation on TV while the film Zaphod is just boring. Some bits are done well, such as the Vogons and the Vogon City … but it just leaves you with a feeling of ‘something missing’.

Perhaps its Hollywoods unwillingness to completely immerse into weird British humour and opting for mainstream safe. Or perhaps its just missing Douglas.