Many, many years ago, I picked up the collected Hunter S. Thompson hardback "The Great Shark Hunt" and read it from one end to the other. I was pretty fucking impressed as well.
But that doesn't mean I thought it would translate onto the big screen and to be quite clear, it doesn't come close. I happened upon a 2005 movie adaption of the great children's book "The Wind In The willows' and I have seldom seen anything worse. Men playing speaking animals just was too real, we couldn't believe, and everything else become off center and tasteless. Bill Murray had the same problem as Hunter S. Thompson in "where The Buffalo's Roam" and Johnny Depp got the great journalist completely wrong twice now. Once in the hideous "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas" and now in the degrading "The Rum Diary".
Degrading? Yeah. Based on an unpublished for decades early Thompson novel, a stand in for the author stops Puerto Rico from being sold to a corrupt real estate middle man and turned into hotels while nailing his gorgeous (Amber Heard) girlfriend. In other words, it's a daydream. And it plays like one, a bad one. Though there is a certain pleasure in Depp turn down alcohol in a "Young Sherlock Holmes" sorta way, not only is Depp too old for the role is he is also way too cute.
It runs its course with a terrific set piece in a PR nightclub, a good freak out on acid ("We've got to get more" mutters Depp -who, by the way, sounds a lot like Popeye) and the chick is a little knockout. But as daydreams go, this one ain't that hot.
Musically, "Volare" plays over the opening credits and the band at the nightclub -sorta bluesy, hard rocking Latin American blacks, should be playing at SOBS.
Movie: B-
Music: B+