I think that my experience watching this movie was seriously dampened by the fact that I read all the books.  If I hadn't I'm sure I would have thought it was okay, but I thought it was really bad, probably because Im comparing it to the book.  I thought that marvin was especially dissaponiting.

That's actually interesting hig, because since I last saw this, I decided to go out and read all of the books.  Last night, we rented and watched it once again, and I have to say that my enjoyment of the film was greatly increased.  The whale and peteunias clicked as did the improbability drive which, when I had not read the books, made no sense to me whatsoever.  Also, I noticed that everything that needs to be known is shown on screen, it is just that the creators decided to keep certain things in the background and not fully presented to the non-Douglas Adams reader's view.  In retrospect, this was probably not a good thing to do.  Even still, I really liked this one once I had read the five novels, and I really hope that a sequel is to be made as I found "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" to be one of my favorites.

Yeah, I dunno, it's just you build the chracters in your mind a certain way, and then when you see the movie it's like a completelt different thing.  I think this falls into the "you can't please everyone" category.

I watched this film recently and thought I'd add to this thread. I'll note that my experience is based solely on watching the movie. I read the book a long, long time ago back in the 80's sometime, so I can't remember a thing.

This movie was just funny. It had a decent plot line and some great gags to fill it in. The jokes were just isolated, but completely ingrained into the storyline making them even funnier than they would be otherwise. It had some great costumes from Jim Henson's creature shop, and some clever and amusing twists to the plot as we traveled along.

My only complaints were that the main character, on two occasions, made some decisions that rested more with moving the plot than what his character would do. It would have better served the character for him to have been dragged away at the point where he just ran when the girl was captured. It just felt wrong.

The other was near the end when he chose to enter the final structure where I would have felt better had he been more hesitant and wanted to return to the others. I just felt his willingly going in was like abandoning everyone. Granted all this worked out, but again, it seemed odd.

The only other hiccup was an importance stressed on carrying a towel, but the reasoning behind this was never really explained. It is used a couple of times, but anything could have conceivably been used. The bad guys seemed afraid of a towel for some reason, but it seems a small thing to carry a towel to defend against one race.

Other than that, good show. Got a kick out of the Point of View Gun and the Improbability Drive.