Numerous well-known actors make cameo appearances, but only Ricci and Ellen Barkin, the latter as an abused, vulnerable diner waitress, stick out from the crowd. Same can’t be said for Del Toro, who put on some 40 pounds for the role, all of it seemingly in his belly, but can do nothing to make Dr. Thesp generally survives the ordeal unscathed. All but permanently equipped with aviator glasses and cigarette holder secured by clenched teeth, the pretty boy will unnerve his fans when, upon arriving in Vegas, he doffs his hat to revealed a bald pate, all the better to resemble Thompson. The one semi-sustaining element through it all is Depp’s performance, which lacks the psychological and emotional underpinnings to make Duke more than one-dimensional but still exerts a certain fascination via the actor’s clipped, staccato delivery and unusual body language. “What was the meaning of this trip?” Duke wonders about halfway through his odyssey, and the film offers not even so much as a tentative answer to this question.Ī final slug of narration offers a feeble critique of Timothy Leary’s influential get-high admonition for not recognizing the consequences of indiscriminate drug use, but this seems almost like an afterthought, a tacked-on sop to potential moralistic attacks on the film. Gonzo prove to be uniquely unpleasant characters with whom to spend time, especially as the latter passes out in a crud-filled bathtub or is repeatedly seen barfing into the toilet.įrom the characters’ and the material’s skewered viewpoint, everyone is a freak and nothing - except drugs - has any value. Unfortunately, the answer is more of the same.īriefly effective flashbacks provide a glimpse of Duke’s introduction to the drug scene in San Francisco some years earlier, and an interlude with Christina Ricci as a somnolent teen who paints portraits of Barbra Streisand exclusively injects a different flavor for a few mo-ments.īut Duke and Dr. With so much crazed disorientation flung at the viewer in the first couple of reels, one wonders what can possibly follow it. Their vision of a Vegas bar as a literal lounge for lizards (courtesy of mon-ster makeup ace Rob Bottin) accentuates the in-your-face visual approach meant to convey altered consciousness, but the boys are just warming up grass, booze, mescaline, acid, et al., are nothing compared with ether if you want to lose total control, which they do in a subsequent freak-show sequence. Gonzo arrive in the desert city - where mere possession of marijuana can get you 20 years - and o.d.
The nature of this sort of protest seems less meaningful today than it did then, and the picture does little to make it relevant or plausible for a modern perspective.ĭipping liberally into the drugstore in the trunk of their red Chevy convertible even before they reach their destination, the trim, vacation-wear-attired Duke and the grossly overweight and disheveled Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) ostensibly to cover the off-road Mint 400 motorcycle race but actually, in a larger sense, to rebel against what they see as the plastic, hypocritical nightmare of Nixon’s America by becoming as wasted as possible. to Vegas with his attorney and partner-in-crime Dr.
Some cryptic narration and more than two dozen pop tunes of various vintages provide a fragile frame for the indulgent spree of sports-writer Duke, who drives from L.A. There is an outside chance the film might have worked as a down-and-dirty, on-the-fly low-budgeter such as Rhino originally envisioned it with Alex Cox as director, but the slickness and sheer weight of the current production bog down its flights of fancy rather than liberate them.
Shot with queasy-making, distorting wide-angle lenses and filled with frenetic activity and a torrent of mostly nonsensical dialogue, pic serves up a sensory overload without any compensatory reflection on the outlandish and irresponsible behavior on view.
“This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs,” Depp’s spaced-out journo Raoul Duke quips at one despairing moment, and the excess of mind-boggling amounts of substance abuse piled upon the built-in excess of Vegas proves equally debilitating for the viewer.