Taking material that was a success in one entertainment medium and moving it to another isn't always easy. We've had two recent instances that most everybody would consider a success - converting the Harry Potter books to movies, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Of course, there are also resounding flops, such as the movie version of Dune, or Robert Redford as The Great Gatsby.

Last year, another movie tried to make the leap, with the release of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, this came with a twist, for the source material has already made multiple jumps. Douglas Adams originally wrote Hitchhiker's Guide as radio plays (spots?) for the BBC. Then it made a jump to books, TV, the stage and even computer games. (A text game was released by Infocom, the people who brought us Zork.) The resounding question: How would it fare on the big screen?

I'm a fan of the Adams books and have also played the computer game. (I've seen a few episodes of the British TV version, but wasn't a fan.) As it came time for the movie's release, I kept on thinking of a line from another space movie, "I've got a bad feeling about this." It wasn't that I was afraid that the visual effects of the movie couldn't keep up with the ones conjured up by my imagination. After all, the CGI in The Lord of the Rings had cured me of that worry (although instead of CGI, many of the aliens in this movie were actually puppets put together by Jim Henson's company.)

I was more worried that the essential strengths of Hitchhiker's Guide wouldn't survive. Those strengths: the absurdist humor mixed with the mind-boggling philosophical conundrums that the late Adams sprinkled liberally through his work, the kind that made you say "Whoa" (in a Keanu Reeve sort of voice), back up, and re-read a paragraph or chapter. At least in my view, my worries weren't misplaced. While this wasn't a horrible movie (it wasn't Dune, after all), it never caught on as a big hit with the broader public. In fact, it left our local movie house before I could talk someone into going with me to see it, so my first view of it was actually from the DVD.

There are two kinds of people who may watch the movie. The first group are already fans, if not fanatics, of the material, while the second group are those coming to it fresh. Since I'm a member of the first group, I recruited my 17-year-old daughter to represent the second group.