diogomanuel I chose to watch this movie based on the actors that took part in it. I never read the book this movie was based on so I don't know if the book is accurately depicted on the movie...What I can tell is that despite being entertaining at times, there is too much drinking and drunkenness involved to make it a memorable movie. It feels like a drunken journey to nowhere! A battle against those which have money and don't care about the oppressed ones seems like a political manifesto of some sort, as this movie isn't intended to be political I didn't quite understand the point of all this.

godleyfisher Read the book, do not, I repeat, do not watch this film. This is my first review on IMDb, I'm not a filmy kind of being... my favourite films are Harold and Maud and On Golden Pond. The only thing the book and film have in common is that the book made me want to drink rum for breakfast and the film just drove me to drink! The film should not carry the same name as the book. Positives about the film... Depp's sunglasses, the fiat 500, that's it - two. 'The minimum length for reviews is 10 lines'... goodness without padding a review of this film is impossible. Conclusion: please read the book, do not waste £2.59 on eBay for the DVD (free postage).

paul2001sw-1 Bruce Robinson directed the acclaimed cult movie 'Withnail and I'; Johnny Depp starred in the (also celebrated but, in my opinion, virtually unwatchable) film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. The idea that the former should direct the latter in another of Thompson's stories, 'The Rum Diary', is this either inspired or drearily predictable. In fact, it hasn't turned out too badly, a comedy drama with both elements handled reasonably well, although the story lacks real punch, the central character leaves it with a certain sense of moral purpose, but until that point, the plot basically ambles along for incidental entertainment value only. As with 'Fear and Loathing', a brief excerpt from Thompson's own writing is lent to the film to imbue with moral seriousness at the appropriate point (and it's strange that in both movies, moral seriousness is what the reprobate Thompson is quoted to invoke). Interestingly, this was Robinson's first film as a director for 19 years and as a screenwriter for 12; for someone so out of practice, it's not a bad effort.

MisterWhiplash The Rum Diary - as "straight-forward" a Hunter S. Thompson adaptation as we're ever likely to see - which means it's damn good, and damn understands what the goddamn Hunter S. Thompson was getting at with his work as a whole, even as this is a sort of prequel to his life and work in general (see for example the introduction to LSD and the disgust at Richard Nixon in the 1960 Presidential debates on TV). It may be a little hard not to compare it to Terry Gilliam's Fear & Loathing film from 1998, mostly as it's Thompson again given life by his Hollywood-alter-ego Johnny Depp (and oddly enough has not seemingly aged a day since then even as he's now in his late 40's, good God man what well did he drink from I want it!) But where Gilliam's film was a madcap, grotesque cartoon on the American dream, this takes a mostly more sobering approach, with Dariusz Wolski's cinematography giving Puerto Rico a pretty and pretty dirty look (as, one supposes, it should be) and Bruce Robinson being a wonderful director of actors (being once one and director of one of the great comedies about actors and those on the outside looking in, Withnail & I) it takes on a different shape altogether. Obviously it will attract that group of fans as, frankly, I'm one of them. I can report that this is a film that gives a lot of awesome respect for Thomspon's work (having, ironically, not read this book but most of his others it seems to capture a lot of his thematic concerns in general well enough too), and makes up its own risks as it goes along.It is, again I should stress, a more conventionally shot picture, shot-reverse-shot, not too much crazy lighting, only one very noticeably deranged special effect, which makes up one of the uproarious moments of the picture (hint: They give it to Communists!) And yet there's some daring here and there, and some of my favorite moments of the year are in this picture.For example, Robinson takes the time amid the plot - which is mostly concerned with Depp's disillusioned journalist covering astrology bullshit at a local paper that's going under while tangled up with a shady businessman played by chin-dimple magnet Aaron Eckhardt - to take his sexy co-stars (Depp and Amber Heard) in a sexy red corvette on the road. It's one of those dangerously erotic scenes where it's mostly about how the actors look at one another, and how they look at their bodies, and then the car speed goes up more, and more, and more... and then THERE'S A DOCK! They screech to a halt, and the shot helicopters away from them into the ocean... and the shot doesn't stop at the point one expects it to. And the two stars get out and look out at the ocean, feeling what exactly? It's one of those moments in movies one goes to the movies for.Lastly: Giovanni Ribisi steals his scenes, which is absolutely stunning since I don't think I have come away feeling that in so many years of watching him in films. He comes in much the same way Ralph Brown does in 'Withinail', as a grungy, whacked-out supporting character, but who will leave a damn-BIG impression (particularly in this case as he asks for venereal disease examinations in exchange for drugs and plays records of Hitler... you know, FOR FUN!)