BY MIKEY MIGO
Like most people I’m quick to talk about how great the movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” was and is. I watched in sorta recently and I have to sadly admit that it didn’t hold up for me. It’s got a few really strong and memorable scenes, but the pacing is really bad in the last half. It becomes too muddy and hard to follow with vivid comprehension. Really, I’m just nitpicking. It’s a great movie, but I do feel it’s often held in slightly too high of regards. The point of that mini ramble about a movie that’s closer to twenty years old than ten was that “The Rum Diary” is in the same “world”. Hunter S. Thompson wrote this when he was 25 and it didn’t see publishing until he was 60. It’s a fun story about a writer’s journey externally and internally. In that sense it’s like “Fear and Loathing”, but to me this movie has more of a “Where The Buffalo Roam” feel to it. That’s another Hunter movie, but it’s from back in the day, it stars Bill Murray, and people either don’t know or don’t respect it. Johnny Depp plays the lead, “Paul Kemp”. Paul is a young writer who finds himself in Puerto Rico in 1960. He goes from being complacent to adventurous to reserved to aloof to pretentious and to about two dozen other emotions in between. In most cases it would seem a little “uneven”, but this is Johnny Depp. This plethora of emotion was pulled off flawlessly. He made you relate to the character’s growth and evolution. “Paul” was obviously looking for something and looking to find his voice. This movie shows the journey of “Paul”, and most likely Thompson himself, doing that. I enjoyed the location and the characters. Aaron Eckhart shows up as a douchey businessman that you and Paul know is no good from Jump Street. He’s good in the role. He’s with the young Amber Heard. She and Depp end up having a “thing”. It’s got a healthy amount of screen time, but the back and forth relationship between them didn’t feel like it had a whole lot of chemistry. The editor of the San Juan Star newpaper is played by an always great Richard Jenkins. The two main stand outs to me were Depp’s coherts and peer writers. He doesn’t really get all that much involved until towards the end, but I loved seeing Giovanni Ribisi as “Moberg”. He’s a gross, sickly, drunken, drugged up, man of excess. The randomness that comes out of him is as oddly profound as it is full of air. He nailed the character and brought something really fun and interesting to the story. Michael Rispoli plays “Bob Sala”, a worn down drunken man who gets adventurous in life and drier than sand in text. Rispoli was “Jackie” on “The Sopranos”, but to me I’m always going to remember him in this movie. He is to this movie as Del Toro was to “Fear and Loathing”. Obviously, that’s a big compliment. This is Johnny Depp’s best movie and acting in a long time. I gave up on him after all those pirate and Tim Burton costume movies it just didn’t seem like he was going to work with any real substance. I missed Johnny Depp playing a real person, a human being, someone relatable and with realistic human range. I really hope he sneaks in a few more movies like this in the near future. I’ve missed him. So we get Hunter S. Thompson’s work… Johnny Depp’s best acting in a long time… supporting characters that could have their own movies they’re so interesting… good and solid location… a great score. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s kind of close. Full recommendation. B+
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