Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

VERDICT:
7/10 Gonzo Road Trips

How Hunter S. Thompson lived for as long as he did, I truly don’t know.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is about a journalist and his attorney who drive on down to Sin City in the early ’70s with a trunk full of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, rum, tequila and the dreaded ether while on assignment from Rolling Stone to cover a dune buggy race. Before long, the dune buggies take a backseat as these two maniacs spend their little vacation expanding their minds in near-fatal ways on their journey to chase down “the American Dream”.

First time I saw this, I had no idea who Hunter S. Thompson was. As a result, I really had no idea what to make of what this thing or what I was supposed to get out of it. All I knew by the end was that drugs are bad and I should stay the hell away from ether, and if for some reason I ever do find myself tripping balls on ether, I should stay the hell away from carnivals.

Then I got familiar with Thompson. I read through the source material, loved the source material, saw the movie again and had a whole new appreciation for it. My suggestion: hit up the library and follow suit, it makes all the difference in this instance. It’s not about the book being better than the movie (which it incidentally is), it’s just about getting it.

See, this a weird fucking movie, about as weird as a hyper-real, drug-induced nightmare can be without having dead babies crawling on the ceiling a la Trainspotting. This headlong voyage into strange is both the strength and weakness of this movie as director Terry Gilliam does a pretty bang-up job of taking what a lot of people considered an unfilmable novel and turning into something terrifyingly real.

Gilliam does that a lot. That’s why Gilliam kicks ass six ways from Sunday.

But that’s the thing about Fear and Loathing, that for all the ways it does justice to the novel from a visual and narrative standpoint, the whole tone is totally different. In the book, all the drug-fueled trips, hallucinations and hysterics come off as hilarious, entertaining and all the while insightful. It’s not exactly a hey-kids-drugs-are-fun kind of experience, but the overall vibe is more reminiscent of Half-Baked than Requiem for a Dream. The movie, on the other hand, starts out funny enough, but eventually morphs into a dark, depressing haze that’ll make you want to stay away from scratch-and-sniff markers let alone a freshly rolled doobie.

This isn’t really Gilliam’s fault either, it’s just that a lot of what makes the novel funny instead of grim is Thompson’s voice, and even though a lot of the narration in the movie is ripped verbatim from Thompson’s pen, something was lost in translation. Such is often the case when the real driving force behind an awesome book is the guy or gal writing it rather than the story they’re actually telling.

But that’s my only hang-up with this movie. Johnny Depp is freakin’ dead on in every way an actor can be as Thompson’s alter-ego, Dr. Gonzo, Benicio del Toro is quite convincing as Gonzo’s violent Samoan attorney, Raoul Duke, and there’s a handful of cameos by future A-listers Christina Ricci, Cameron Diaz and a balding Tobey Maguire thrown in there for good measure.

Garey Busey, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Hunter Thompson himself also make appearances, and if that doesn’t sell it for ya’, Busey is gonna rip your endocrine system right out of your body.

If you know about Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is definitely something to appreciate and, despite its flaws, Gilliam does a solid job of bringing to the screen one crazy ass Vegas vacation that makes The Hangover look like a lazer tag party at Chuck-E-Cheese. For those who don’t know Thompson, get familiar, stay the hell away from bat country, then go ahead and prep yourself for two hours of sheer insanity.