We went to see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy last night with Steve and his MENSA moving group.
I never read the books … and when I watched it on PBS, I gave up quickly because the production values were so low (really bad props & special effects and pretty marginal acting, IMHO).
The movie certainly had far better production values … and was pretty funny, but seemed kind of disjointed to me. From what I could tell, they took a bunch of sections of all the book and stuck them together in a bit of a hodge-podge. There were also a lot of important elements that they used but never explained (Towels, in particular … and the “Peril Sensitive Sunglasses” that Ford & Zaphod wore).
I did laugh a lot … but only at the individual gags … the movie lacked a cohesiveness that I would have liked.