A very funny, very visual journey that’s entertaining and different without saying very much at all of importance. In following its two main characters’ non-stop drug trip en route to attempting to cover a desert bike race outside of the titular city, the movie simultaneously provides a pretty strong explanation of both why people do drugs and why they absolutely should not do drugs. Still, there are those who will see the movie as a glamorization of the drug culture (if close-up shots of a person vomiting about a half gallon of half-digested food into a toilet can be considered glamorous) and the film’s greatest destiny is most likely as a cult-hit to be played and re-played endlessly late at night in college dorm rooms before the next generation of stoned-out youth.
In bringing these acid trips to life, genius-among-us Terry Gilliam has lots of fun with fish-eye lenses and those newfangled computer generated effects. He hasn’t given us eye-candy this good since Brazil -- no small praise indeed.
As for the cast, Johnny Deep disappears -- along with his hairline -- into the Thompson-persona, becoming a life-size version of the writer’s “Doonesbury” caricature. And a shockingly obese Benicio Del Torro keeps up with him as his attorney sidekick. Christina Ricci, Ellen Barkin and Flea, among others, also delight in cameo roles.
If the film has any major flaws, it’s that it’s too long, and Thompson’s nostalgic longing for San Francisco in the late-’60s seems a bit trite. I might have liked to seen the layers pulled-back a bit to provide some insight, from a perspective of a quarter-century later, as to why these people so needed to be strung out. But that would’ve been a different movie. This film, for what it is, is -- at risk of sounding again like one of those overexcited reviewers -- one trip worth taking.