Review - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Bobcat Goldthwaite once joked that Elvis Presley shouldn’t have needed drugs because he was rich enough to pay people to perform hallucinations for him. Now thanks to Terry Gilliam, even the poor and humble can watch drug-addled weirdness without risking top dollar or arrest for possession. Johnny Depp does a good job in this cinematic version of Hunter S. Thompson’s conclusive proof – as if any were really necessary – that Las Vegas on acid is one strange place. Of course with a literary junkie protagonist, a pile of big names (presumably drawn by the hip-ness of the project) in the supporting cast, and a lot of bizarre special effects to create a reality-challenged experience, this evokes the memory of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch; this time around the story is more cheerful but likewise more frivolous. Overall this came across as the sort of movie one makes when one loves a book but can’t quite find the cinematic “words” to express one’s affection. Mildly amusing