Plot summary: Meek, mild-mannered human Arthur Dent gets taken for a ride by hitch-hiking alien Ford Prefect, narrowly escaping the destruction of the Earth. They zip about on a stolen spacecraft whose powerful improbability drive can make just about anything happen, provided it can calculate how unlikely it is.
Science review: Explaining which bits of the film (from a fish that, when you put it in your ear, translates everything into an understandable language, to a spaceship that converts missiles into geraniums to defeat a hostile attack) are based vaguely on plausible bits of science, and which are just silly, is beyond the scope of this review. Thankfully we don't have to bother, because someone has done it for us. Michael Hanlon takes a tour through the books in his Science of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (see ' Don't Panic!').
Award: Noblest attempt to make statistics fun.
Image: © Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc. |
