The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
 
Features  |  Reviews
Goth-header-1000x50

Review: The Rum Diary

Depp as the younger Hunter S. Thompson
By ANN LEWINSON  |  October 25, 2011
3.0 3.0 Stars



It's 1960 and Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) is a young writer who has blundered his way into a job at the San Juan Star, an English-language newspaper on its last legs. Assigned to horoscopes and fleabag lodgings with a photographer (Michael Rispoli), his rooster, and a bedraggled weirdo (Giovanni Ribisi) who distills what he claims is 470 proof rum, Paul finds his writing voice on this island of bowling alleys, duty-free shops, and off-shore banks, thanks to the come-ons of a shady developer (Aaron Eckhart) and his first acid trip. It's neat seeing Depp, more than a decade after his balding Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, as the younger Hunter S. Thompson, softening mannerisms later made brittle with cocaine, even if the performance is all surface. Writer-director Bruce Robinson has rewritten Thompson's autobiographical novel in the inebriated-buddy image of his Withnail and I; his dialogue is wickedly quotable, his moral outrage unabashed.

Related: Review: Vincent Wants to Sea, Review: Terri, Review: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, More more >
  Topics: Reviews , opinion, writing, English,  More more >
| More

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 10/27 ]   New World Jazz Composers Octet  @ Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center
[ 10/27 ]   Pete Wentz & The Black Cards  @ Estate
ARTICLES BY ANN LEWINSON
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: THE RUM DIARY  |  October 25, 2011
    It's neat seeing Depp, more than a decade after his balding Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , as the younger Hunter S. Thompson, softening mannerisms later made brittle with cocaine, even if the performance is all surface.
  •   REVIEW: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3  |  October 25, 2011
    Aside from the fan-cam, 3 has little to offer: the camera is shakier and 2 's ludicrous backstory is continued.
  •   REVIEW: JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN  |  October 18, 2011
    Like 2007's underrated Mr. Bean's Holiday, Johnny English Reborn, directed by Oliver Parker, improves on its unwatchable predecessor.
  •   REVIEW: MARGIN CALL  |  October 18, 2011
    The financial crisis of 2008 awaits its Social Network; until then we have Margin Call, which zaps its credibility from the get-go when a downsized risk analyst (Stanley Tucci) openly passes a flash drive to an underling (Zachary Quinto) as he's escorted him from the building by security.
  •   REVIEW: REAL STEEL  |  October 05, 2011
    Charlie Kenton is America.

 See all articles by: ANN LEWINSON

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed