01/24/10 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998, 118 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120669/

I don't really know what prompted me to check out Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Maybe it was that I had just seen Blow and Brick and this would be an impromptu "drug trilogy" but whatever it was I didn't really know what to expect. Sure I liked Johnny Depp a lot and Benicio Del Toro is always good but I wasn't quite sure what type of movie this was going to be.

The film follows Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio Del Toro as Dr Gonzo and is based off the adventures as detailed in Hunter S. Thompson's book of the same name. Basically Duke (Thompson) is sent out to write a story but he really just goes to Las Vegas and does a lot of drugs, of which the affects are shown.

The acting here is really just Depp and Del Toro. There's a few minor cameos like Gary Busey as a Highway Patrolman or Ellen Barkin as Waitress at North Star Cafe. But these people are only in one scene each and don't really add much to the movie. As for Depp, he overplays the role in my opinion. While I'm not saying the times when he's on drugs are overacted, it's just that at times I felt that Depp was trying to make me laugh at everything he said. Now, I realize that this is - to some extent - how the character was supposed to be played. I think I read Thompson liked the portrayal. But in my opinion as a viewer it was a little too over-the-top. Del Toro plays a similar bizarre character but he doesn't go to quite the extent that Depp does. I thought Del Toro gave a good, balanced performance.

As I complained about in Blow, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas seems to really over glorify drug use. While that seems to also be part of what the novel goes for and this was based on the novel, it is somewhat taxing at times to watch. From what I've read the drug use scenes were really captured well and Thompson liked them. But as for the movie itself it seemed to be really boring when it wasn't doing this. And for me - not finding these drug scenes all that great from a plot or anything perspective - this left not that much of great movie to view. I mean, I kind of understand what they were shooting for here but it just came off to me more as a gimmick than anything and that between these scenes there wasn't anything for the characters to do.

There was a sometimes funny voice over provided by Depp and it's hard to deny that the characters were at least interesting. But take these away and you pretty much have a picaresque where most of the "adventure scenes" or whatever are scenes highlighting Duke and Dr Gonzo on drugs. Now, like I said above, these scenes were extremely well made for what they were trying to portray - from what I've read. So that makes it kind of hard for me to say that the movie was bad on these fronts. So, taking that into account, there still isn't that great of a movie here. I mean, I find myself hard-pressed to say much more than these few things - something I think indicates how little substance there is in this film.

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. While I kind of only said negative things up above, I'll admit that the movie does have quite a few positives. Many of the scenes are quite hilarious and the characters are extremely memorable. Further, many aspects of the film were loved by Thompson so that's a huge plus. The movie didn't do it for me, but I can easily see how someone would love this movie - though in my opinion for all the wrong reasons.