For sci-fi lovers the world over, Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is sacred text, so it comes as no surprise that its arrival on celluloid has been met with considerably furrowed brows, especially in the wake of its author's death -- Adams suffered a fatal heart attack in 2001 in the midst of writing the screenplay. However, if the film's gloriously skewed and occasionally beautiful soundtrack is any indication, the Guide is in good hands. Director Garth Jennings tapped the considerable talents of award-winning U.K. composer/arranger and
Divine Comedy member
Jobi Talbot to swing the baton, and his reverence for the source material is evident from the very first note. Using Stephen Fry's wry summary of marine life's misunderstood intelligence to set the stage,
Talbot unleashes -- along with a chorus that includes a bawdy choir, a little girl, and an opera singer -- "So Long & Thanks for All the Fish," a rousing, Broadway-style farewell to the planet (and its befuddled citizens) that's equal parts Rocky Horror and
Monty Python. Mischief and Creativity are the muses here, as
Talbot makes the "Destruction of Earth" sound both terrifying and irreverent -- it launches into the banjo-led "Journey of the Sorcerer" that sounds like an updated version of "Classical Gas" -- before introducing "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in a swirl of electronic melodiousness. The retro-analog synth that fuels "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster" and "Infinite Improbability Drive" -- both of which would have made excellent
Stereolab titles -- is a nice touch, effectively relaying the bittersweet joy so inherent in Adams' prose, and the mariachi/exotica-tinged "Vitvodle Street Music" is
Talbot's version of the Star Wars cantina band. The composer enlists his longtime collaborator and bandmate, Neil Hannon, to lend his
Scott Walker-esque pipes to the "So Long & Thanks for the Fish" reprise, as well as the sly and infectious "Vote Beeblebrox," a timely satire concerning the reelection of "the President of the Galaxy" (voiced by a wonderfully disinterested Sam Rockwell).
Talbot has created a world as strange and engaging as the story itself, and it translates because he's such an obvious fan. Like Adams, he knows that comedy is nothing without a perfect balance of heart and whimsy, and there is so much of each crammed into his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that the listener is compelled to hang on every note in case something wonderful might happen. ~ James Christopher Monger