Henry W Jones said:
What a waste of talent. I am glad I saw this at the two dollar theater on one dollar Tuesday. It has some funny moments but it seriously lacks plot. Every time the story seems to be going somewhere all the sudden what's going on changes and there is no resolve to anything throughout the film. Left the theater feeling like I experienced some random, incompleted movie that still needed the script finished.
Well the thing is, it is following the book, and in the book nothing really gets resolved either, except Kemp realizes the corruption in Puerto Rico.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is much the same, it has little resolution. Duke goes out searching for the american dream but never really finds it. The "wave speech" is really the back bone idea that comes out of that movie. An epitaph for the sixties which Thompson realized before most did in 1971. I think one reason
Fear and Loathing has a bit more satisfying of an ending is the fact that the Duke character actually sticks it to "the man" every chance he can by drinking engaging in "illegal activities" and generally acting like a madman... having fun on an almost mythical level that would put most people in jail nowadays and he gets away with it, whereas the Kemp character in
The Rum Diary really only drinks and sticks it to the man once by sleeping with the main corrupt bastard's girl.
I saw the movie twice, for two reasons... support for the people involved (this was Johnny Depp's baby, his dream project, a love letter to Hunter S. Thompson, so when I saw the box office wasn't doing so well I went out to throw a few more buck their way) and because I was pretty "far gone" when I saw it the first time.
"Waste of talent"... hmmm I don't think so, I think it just didn't satisfy you and a lot of folks but that is the nature of this story and Thompson. I thought that there were some good performances in there. I don't think it was as good per-say as Gilliam's take on
Fear and Loathing, but the love was there. This was the first film from Depp's own production company and I think a noble entry and the right first film for his company. Nobody else would have or could have made it.
