"Puerto Rico Welcomes You!" reads the banner as the plane streaks by Johnny Depp's hotel room in this hilariously quirky, but twisted comedy. The Rum Diary is based off of Hunter S. Thompson's novel of the same name. Director Bruce Robinson intentionally, or unintentionally, does a homage to the mayhem of and absurdity of Johnny Depp's other take on a Hunter S. Thompson work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I'll just come out and say it, this movie has two of my biggest man crushes: Johnny Depp, and Aaron Eckhart. Eckhart plays the exploitative yankee businessman keen to capitalize on the sugar sand beaches and perfect clime of la Isla Encanta. There are other interesting characters we meet in this playful romp, such as: Giovanni Ribisi as apparently an employed reporter, Michael Rispoli as a reporter who claims to know the island, and Richard Jenkins as the editor of the paper that hired Depp.
However, it is Depp's relationship with another man's woman that really drives the story. Amber Heard is excellent as a more than meets the eyes woman who Depp covets from Eckhart. Their affair motivates Depp to action, and well you get the rest.
I loved this movie. It wasn't a great film per se, but it was deliciously entertaining to me. They do an excellent job of capitalizing on the beauty of the island to further what I guess they are calling a plot. In a lot of ways the plot is really just "let's have Johnny Depp play a reporter on drugs in the Caribbean and see what happens."
7/10, but I'm probably being generous on the score, it is realistically a 6/10 that bats like a 8-9/10
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