The Rum Diary (2011)
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals. It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
Watch Trailer
Free Trial Channels
Cast
Similar titles
Reviews
This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
How sad is this?
What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
This is just such a fun film to watch. It's very clever and very funny. So while Depp previously and realistically portrayed Hunter S. Thompson in "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas" (another cult classic) this was based on an unpublished novel he had written. You can truly see his acting talent shine on display here, let's face it he can sometimes really phone in his performance or sleepwalk through a film. This is a film Depp was passionate about making and it shows. Good stuff.
As others have observed, it is not useful to review this movie on whether it follows or not the book that inspired it. We are reviewing a movie, and my opinion on any movie is shaped by these questions: "Is is engaging? Is it moving without pandering? Is it cinematographically driven? Do I learn something from the story? Do I feel smarter after watching it? Did I root for any character in the script? Is it entertaining in an intelligent way?" I must respond yes to all of that for Rum Diary. The script did suffer from too fast- or too flat- an ending, but it kept me engaged throughout and up to the last 3 minutes. There were comic moments, moments of beauty, and a very realistic thread. The atmosphere is superbly rendered: I could feel the sweat and the threats, and I could relate to the politics at stake. The plot lives by the Oscar Wilde line quoted by the Johnny Depp character at some point: "Some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." I subscribe to that line, rooted for our lost journalist to find his way, and I enjoyed the escape for 90 min into a lush tropical 60s landscape.
(62%) A solidly made, funny (sometimes very), yet still somewhat rambling, and beneath the surface it's a little hollow. Johnny Depp is fairly well cast in the lead, and uses both his good acting ability and comic timing in equal measure, and with the strong support from the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Richard Jenkins, the greatly underrated Giovanni Ribisi, and an oddly too beautiful Amber Heard all helping to make this a stronger film than the quite limited material has to offer. Despite this being a good twenty minutes or so over-long, it never really fails to either entertain or amuse. Overall a worthy watch, but nothing that really needs to be seen.
This movie can be summed up in one word: boring. There's no story line, no jokes, no drama, no excitement, the dialogues are shale, bordering, to the ridicule. The characters are shallow and predictable, clichés all along. Depp is at his lowest, he seems like bored by himself. I've never seen him acting so lousy, he seems to have totally lost it. As for Amer Heard, the less screen time she gets the better. It's beyond me why she has been cast in the first place. It's obvious her talent lies with another movie genre with a more visual focus and very little dialogues. A most disappointing experience. So spare yourself this disappointment and employ your time with a more useful endeavor. For example reading the book.