The Worst Film Ever

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

As Good As It Gets

Johnny Depp plays Kemp, a man you will follow though out his crazy, seldom comical, adventure in Puerto Rico. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I really never did find this film funny.It's rare that I rate a Johnny Depp film low but this one is all that gran to me - even the story is rather boring for me to watch... maybe it's just me this evening but the film is boring me to tears. I'll have to rate this film a big ol' 5. 5 stars for Johnny Depp, -5 for the film itself.5/10

American journalist Paul Kemp takes on a freelance job in Puerto Rico for a local newspaper during the 1960s and struggles to find a balance between island culture and the expatriates who live there. The big problem for me with The Rum Diary was the direction and the script it self many things could have been handled better for example the whole thing with Kemp and Sanderson or even the whole love story with Sanderson's girlfriend Chenault, it's also not very funny you might chuckle once or twice but that's it and even the scene with the car wasn't as funny as i hoped. As far as acting goes Johnny Depp and Giovanni Ribisi the rest of the cast was alright there's no stand out performances by anyone else but they were just there nothing more. It's far better than the trailer made it look like but the troubled script and direction, poor comedy and the fact that nothing happens take the premise away and i'm sure that they cut a lot of stuff from the book but like i said the actors did fine with their characters and it's not that boring as a film but don't except much from it i'll give it an a 7.1/10.

While this was not a poorly made film, it lacked a sense of purpose. It is about a made-up writer (that they falsely lead you to believe was a real man) who moves to Puerto Rico to get a job and is a drunk. What else is it about may you ask? I'm not altogether sure. It was not completely incoherent, but the storyline had no focus. It jumped around and quickly left one topic, idea, or narrative just as soon as it introduced it. Towards the end right when you think Paul Kemp had an ambitious cause, it was over. With the cheesy line "this is the end of one story and the beginning of another" they leave you to realize that you are in the same place as you started. Nothing had really happened at all or had been accomplished. I did enjoy the performances by all of the actors, but this fact was dampened by distractions of the plot that lead to nowhere. In the end it all just seemed pointless and without reason.

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!)