The Rum Diary (2011)



Depp look-alike Ribisi as Moberg

 I don't know what to make of this film, it was darkly funny in parts, serious in others with political overtones, and romantic elsewhere. Its as if the producer/director didn't know what he wanted to : an expose of the evil US empire playing in it's backyard, or the turning point in the journalist Kemp career (supposed to be Hunter S. Thompson), or a comic play on the eccenticities of newspaper journalists, or a  lifestyle show on the rich Americans in Latin America in this case Puerto Rico, a travelogue, or even a love story. Anyway, whatever they had in mind there is little conviction to carry the story convincingly. Moreover, I suppose Johnny Depp is a draw card and gurantees some gate entry but what a wooden actor. He looks the same if he's having a sexual meltdown or he's waking up from sleep or he is driving a car, and again as if by design he is given so little to say. Apart from looks I don't know what people see in his acting capabilities.  D.Giovanni Ribisi is more interesting as Moberg  the drunkard journalist who according to to his Newspaper boss "couldn't get a job as fly repellant!" . Overall a disapponting film.