The movie starts out on planet Earth somewhere in England in the bedroom of Arthur Dent (Freeman). He wakes up, heads downstairs for some tea and strumpets and a nice read of the old black and white, when all of the sudden the whole flat (house) starts to shudder. It would seem the old boy is about to get spaced. Arthur looks outside to see bulldozers and contractors everywhere hell bent on smashing his little abode to splinters. Art pleads but the foreman proceeds to remind him that the order for demolition has been in the building commissioners office for months and if he wanted to save his home he should have spoken up before now.

Enter Arthur’s best friend, Ford Prefect (Def). Ford delivers beer to the contractors and tells Art to come with him to the pub and nothing will happen to his house until they finish their pints. Ordering 3 for each of them Ford begins to tell Art that today is the very last for dear old mother Earth and in about 10 minutes it would all be over… you see Ford is actually not a rapper at all, he is a space alien (of course he is, that would explain the Mos Def name). The pints get downed and so does the Earth and next thing we know our heroes are aboard a Vogon (scary fat aliens that resemble Marlon Brando post Godfather) construction vessel where they get captured and tortured with poetry??? This is where the movie started to lose me but luckily I caught back up long enough to get lost again later.

Art and Ford get dropped out an airlock and just before the 30 seconds of oxygen leaves them they get picked up by another passing ship (hitchhikers you know) and become couches, yes you read that right they become couches. I don’t get it. Well, I mean I get it in the sense I know what a couch is but I don’t get why they become couches. Anyway after they stop being couches and ‘Normality’ returns they find out they are on board the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox’s (Rockwell) ship, the Heart of Gold. Here Art finds his one true Earthly love Trillian (they met earlier but he refused to go to Madagascar and she chose the Galactic prez instead)… Do you see what I mean when I say lost?

Freaky, weird oddball stuff that got weirder with each passing minute! The best part other than the excellent Dubya impression by Zaphod and the appearance of John Malkovich was Marvin (Warwick Davis) voiced by Alan Rickman… He is a manic depressive robot with an oversized head and a penchant for drama. He made this thing tolerable for me and if it hadn’t been for the mice and flowers… never mind that gives away too much. I will stop here and let you go see it for yourself. I am not sure if it follows the book or not since as you can see from the comment above, I have not read it!

I like British humor and love Monty Python but this did not blow my kilt up as much as it did some of the other guys here at MFG that saw it, so if you want another opinion I suggest you email John and ask him what he thought. Sorry Douglas Adams geeks but I stand by my 3 stars.

The Office premiered on the BBC back in 2001 and was a smash hit. This time it wasn’t aimed at geeks, but was aimed at office life in general. Also, since they had more than 90 minutes to work with they were able to tackle a much wider array of issues. Does it work? Do you see the 5 stars at the top of this review?

The story is told as a documentary on office life, centering on the boss of a regional sales office for a paper company. David Brent (the boss, played by writer/director Ricky Gervais) thinks he’s a comedian and that all of his employees love him. Of course he’s not even slightly funny, and nobody in the office cares about him at all. The other main characters are Tim Canterbury (sales), Gareth Keenan (sales), and Dawn Tinsley (reception.) There are many others, and they’re all great, but the plot mainly revolves around these three.

Gareth is a type-A geek who has no clue as to how stupid some of the things he says are and who has no manners whatsoever. Tim is laid back but also unmotivated, and mainly gets through the day by winding Gareth up on a regular basis with the help of Dawn. Is there a plot to pull this together? Well yes, but that’s hardly the point. Seems there are two sales offices that are going to be combined to cut costs, but which office will close and which will move… and in the process, who will be made redundant? Really though the pleasure in this show is just watching how much this office mirrors parts of your own workplace. We all know a Gareth, and we all know a Tim that likes to poke at him. We’ve all had bosses that think they are brilliant but don’t have a freakin clue.

The other nice thing about this set is that it’s BBC programming, and censorship in England isn’t the same as it is here. They can say words we don’t even print on the website, and their site gags aren’t limited either. Can you imagine seeing a 3ft. long inflatable penis on American TV? How about a purple, studded, rotating vibrator? Oh, and they aren’t “Politically Correct” either and can poke fun at race and disability without worrying about lawsuits. Heck, if the food over there didn’t suck so bad I might move! Then again, they do have Krispy Kreme now…

This DVD set is worth every penny and then some. The 7 and a half hours will go by so quickly you’ll think you must have missed a DVD while watching it. In fact, I think I’m gonna go watch it again.