FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
This is a film you will either loathe (The title tells it all) or love. Put me down for the former. Despite being based on Hunter S. Thompson's very popular 1970s book that swept through all the colleges, Terry Gilliam erred in trying to make it into a movie. The results are disastrous.
In the 1970s, bad things were happening all over our country; our students were in a turmoil. Drugs were in. Even respectable professors told their students that LSD was harmless and would broaden their lives, give inspiration to artists. So it was that many got stoned and stayed that way for years with dropping out of school becoming a frequent occurrence.
This film is about that era and about two who lived through that period. The film's problem is that every scene is nothing more than a duplicate of what went before: drugs taken to excess, the effects never allowed to wear off, disgusting uninhibited behavior by both principal characters. To indicate that would have been fine; to show every moment of their miserable lives, in detail, becomes too obnoxiously boring.
I have been an admirer of Johnny Depp as an actor since first seeing him in the wonderful "WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE" (the same film that had Leonardo di Caprio in a great performance as a retarded young man). Here Depp is Raoul Duke, a sportswriter. Depp is outlandishly terrific as the stoned writer but after an hour of the same, the excitement he engendered began to pall. There is a limit to how much one can take of repetitive acting with only changes in the scenery, the location.
Duke rides to Las Vegas with his fat-bellied attorney, Dr. Gonzo, (Benicio del Toro) to Las Vegas. Again, what starts out as weirdly funny soon slows to a halt. Is Dr. Gonzo, belly protruding through his open shirt while he lies clothed in a water-filled bathtub, funny? I think not.
Director Terry Gilliam has made some very entertaining films (Time Bandits, The Adventures of the Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys . . . and more) but Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas is not one of them.
Directed by Terry Gilliam
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Copyright 1998 Ben Hoffman
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