Interrupted Intimacy: Just as Kemp and Chenault are about to have sex, Moburg's old vynil acts up, with Hitler giving a speech. Paul goes at it with very little enthusiasm, at one point referring to it as a "horrorscope". Paul is assigned to the horoscope section of the San Juan Star paper by his boss because Paul's aims as being a brutally honest journalist conflicts with the feelgood, profit-over-journalistic-integrity that the paper is going for. Horrorscope: The trope is name-dropped. They win, but return to the office to find that the printing presses have been confiscated. They visit Papa Nebo, Moburg's hermaphrodite witch doctor, to lay a blessing on the strongest fighting cockerel on the island, which Sala manages to borrow. Beastly Bloodsports: To make money to print the last edition, Kemp, Sala and Moburg place a big cockfighting bet. Thomas bar when Chenault decides to go dancing there just to spite him. Bar Brawl: Sanderson ends up getting beaten by the angry locals at the St. The Alcoholic: Most of the main cast, but especially the side character Moberg whose booze consumption puts the rest of the cast drunken characters to shame. In the film, she wears a red dress and the scene fades away as she's dancing with the locals, making it more ambiguous whether she was raped or not. In the book, she strips naked in the middle of the dance floor and gets dragged off by island locals, and is heavily implied to be raped. Adaptational Skimpiness: The scene with Chenault dancing at the bar is greatly toned down. And Amber Heard makes a beautiful, vulnerable young Chenault, while Aaron Eckhart is a great angry sleazeball. Speaking of Depp, he and Michael Rispoli have great chemistry together, which is important as they spend the most time together, too. In some ways, it’s as big of a break-out as Depp’s first appearance as Hunter S Thompson. Moburg is hilarious, and Ribisi really adds a layer to the character with his expressions and the voice he uses to speak as Moburg. Part of the reason for this preference is that Giovanni Ribisi steals every scene he’s in. It’s a bit like two movies in one, and I preferred the one with Moburg and Sala. The scenes in which Kemp interacts with Sala and Moburg, for example, are brilliantly funny, while the scenes in which Kemp interacts with Sanderson and associates are much dryer. However, if such a thing is possible, The Rum Diary focuses too much on Chenault, Sanderson, and Kemp, and not enough on the weird oddities that surround Kemp. Kemp and Duke are both stand-ins for Thompson himself, and the characters in The Rum Diary are based off of real people Thompson worked with and associated with during his year in San Juan working for the real-life San Juan Star. Robinson’s script isn’t as faithful as Terry Gilliam’s work on Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, with Robinson tweaking The Rum Diary into some sort of Fear And Loathing prequel, as if Paul Kemp would drop a whole lot of acid and morph into the terror of Las Vegas, Raoul Duke. The Rum Diary is a bit rambling and aimless, which makes it exactly like the source novel. 
As such, he’s the perfect choice to adapt The Rum Diary into a movie, and he does his best with the source material. He started out working for the paper, but soon branched out, using his contacts and schmoozing skills to make a whole lot of money in less than legal ways.ĭirector Bruce Robinson is famous for his cult classic Withnail & I, which is a semi-autobiographical tale the type of which The Rum Diary’s author, Hunter S Thompson, became famous for. Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart) is one of those people. Lots of people are getting very rich, and if you know the right people you might be able to get in on it, too. While the news room is depressing and the San Juan Star is struggling, Puerto Rico circa 1960 is in the middle of a massive property boom. Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) has no better options, and Kemp is young and +fiery enough to add a little spirit to a dispirited news room which features a heavy-drinking photographer named Sala (Michael Rispoli) and the deranged Moburg (Giovanni Ribisi) among many other colorful characters. However, the work is good enough to get Kemp a job with the San Juan Star, an English-language paper in Puerto Rico catering mostly to tourists and staffed by a motley assortment of flotsam and jetsam.
The rum diary full#
Unfortunately for Kemp, his best and most creative writing work is on his resume, which is full of lies, half-truths, and exaggerations. With two and a half unpublished novels under his belt, Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) is definitely a writer.
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