Review of The Rum Diary (2011) by Nathan C — 09 Aug 2012

This may have the feel of a quality product, but, despite what expectations I may have had (or what anyone would have had, for that matter), it ends up being a disappointing mess. By no means a disaster, but it feels awfully like a cinematic hangover.

A journalist who is awfully tired of being in New York goes away to Puerto Rico to write for a newspaper. However, it's a crap job but he is allured away by rum, eccentricities, and a babe, who is the love interest of a capitalist businessman, who decides to use the journalist for his scheme.

With Johnny Depp and Hunter S. Thompson's material in play, this could have been crazy. Even gonzo. In a sense, it does achieve its quirky sensibilities, with its outrageous characters (especially the notorious Moburg) and occasional forays into the strange. Some moments were amusingly off-beat. It's also very stylish, with a ring of class all about. Beautiful Puerto Rico photography does manage to keep one awake throughout the entire film. The actors are game, and, with snappy dialogue here and there, they try their best, which isn't quite good enough with a very lame script.

What makes this pic truly suffer is how such colorful material ends up translating into a really bland movie. It's very uneven, trying to be both a strange comedy and an uber-serious drama. In its dramatic moments, it just goes to a halt and dies, with attempts to recover itself not going well. Even more irritating is how the "plot" goes absolutely nowhere. With so many loose ends and nobody -- not even a "skilled" director -- to tie them, it ends up being jumbled-up, lost, and confused, like Thompson's protagonists. Its overlong runtime just adds more agony to the proceedings.

Overall, "The Rum Diary" could've been a decent indie, but too much dissonance and deviation spoils everything, even a movie that's shiny and polished on the surface.