(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.

Read the book, do not, I repeat, do not watch this film. This is my first review on IMDb, I'm not a filmy kind of being... my favourite films are Harold and Maud and On Golden Pond. The only thing the book and film have in common is that the book made me want to drink rum for breakfast and the film just drove me to drink! The film should not carry the same name as the book. Positives about the film... Depp's sunglasses, the fiat 500, that's it - two. 'The minimum length for reviews is 10 lines'... goodness without padding a review of this film is impossible. Conclusion: please read the book, do not waste £2.59 on eBay for the DVD (free postage).

Bruce Robinson directed the acclaimed cult movie 'Withnail and I'; Johnny Depp starred in the (also celebrated but, in my opinion, virtually unwatchable) film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. The idea that the former should direct the latter in another of Thompson's stories, 'The Rum Diary', is this either inspired or drearily predictable. In fact, it hasn't turned out too badly, a comedy drama with both elements handled reasonably well, although the story lacks real punch, the central character leaves it with a certain sense of moral purpose, but until that point, the plot basically ambles along for incidental entertainment value only. As with 'Fear and Loathing', a brief excerpt from Thompson's own writing is lent to the film to imbue with moral seriousness at the appropriate point (and it's strange that in both movies, moral seriousness is what the reprobate Thompson is quoted to invoke). Interestingly, this was Robinson's first film as a director for 19 years and as a screenwriter for 12; for someone so out of practice, it's not a bad effort.

The film has its faults but I can't help feeling the previous reviewer has missed the point slightly. This is one of those journalistic backwaters where sweet FA happens and the focus of interest is actually in being and living there, nothing else. Like so many expats that choose obscurity over fame, remoteness over being at the heart of the action, the paps in this film revel in doing as little as possible, dawdling from day to day like snails playing a board game on a wall calendar, and generally hoovering up as much booze, sun and sex as possible. I've met expats like this, and they're probably a dying breed by now, most of them having become extinct by virtue of their cirrhotic lifestyle and bacheloresque failure to procreate. That said, this movie is a kind of snapshot, frozen in time to a particular era, like any road movie in fact - only this one ain't going nowhere, nor is it meant to. There are some great lines in it too, but what else would you expect from a film based on Hunter S. Thompson, surely? I've only seen the film once but definitely plan a reunion sooner rather than later.