The Rum Diary
FilmDistrict | Release Date: October 28, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
56
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
16
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallOct 26, 2011
Thompson's fans will embrace its twisted verbal dexterity, romantically imagining the author feverishly pulling strings from the beyond. Read full review
80
EmpirePhilip WildingNov 7, 2011
A fitting tribute to Hunter and the demise of the American Dream, but first and foremost a thrilling and funny snapshot of a country on its knees and a writer finding his feet. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe HollemanOct 28, 2011
Depp shows again that he truly understands Thompson by delivering a nuanced performance that is remarkably different, but subliminally similar, from the wonderfully outrageous turn he provided in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 27, 2011
Jazzy and colorful, full of men and women in swell clothes driving cool cars, The Rum Diary has a bit of a seedily exotic Graham Greene vibe, and Robinson moves things along at a nice, casual clip, even in the film's more overheated moments. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie OgleOct 27, 2011
A big, rambling, entertaining love letter to the late Hunter S. Thompson. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissOct 27, 2011
An agreeable time-waster for the onlookers and its star. The Rum Diary isn't a corrective to Johnny Depp's kid-centric career, more like a vacation from it, in a resort where the visitors are strange, the natives are restless and the flow of alcohol endless. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 27, 2011
The Rum Diary is enjoyable enough, after its digressive, episodic and voyeuristic fashion. But neither Depp nor Robinson seems quite aware that Thompson's story - both in terms of his brief career in Puerto Rico and in terms of his life - was at least as much a story of tragedy and self-immolation as it was of genius. Read full review
70
Boxoffice MagazineDavid EhrlichOct 27, 2011
The Rum Diary is so visually enchanting that many viewers may be too lost in a haze of charm to care that the film never develops Thompson's then-nascent wisdom any further than the young writer did in the novel itself. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzOct 26, 2011
You also get drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. By the time the movie is half over, you'll feel hungover. Read full review
70
VarietyJustin ChangOct 22, 2011
Temperance of a different sort, a willful abstention from trippy stylistic excess, is what makes this 1960-set Caribbean picaresque easily the most lucid screen adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's work, even if it's still several drafts shy of a fully developed yarn. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 28, 2011
Depp is disappointingly recessive here, as he often is when he's playing characters who don't have an antic streak. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasOct 26, 2011
"Fear And Loathing" star Johnny Depp more or less reprises his role as Thompson's alter ego, once again playing a journalist whose yen for excess obscures the idealism at his core. But the film, despite its obvious intelligence and flashes of wit, doesn't bring that passion across. Read full review
67
IndieWireEric KohnOct 22, 2011
The result is a subpar comic adventure that's nonetheless admirable for its restrained vision of Thompson in his early gestation period. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyOct 28, 2011
Essentially an affectionate and personal project to honour Thompson's memory, The Rum Diary occasionally strains to evoke the journalist's surreal black humour. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 28, 2011
Intermittently interesting, but well-intentioned, it almost makes up for "The Tourist." Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigOct 27, 2011
The tale was no doubt meant to convey Kemp/Thompson's boozy aimlessness, but the film feels disjointed and meandering as a result. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 27, 2011
At best diverting, at worst drearily conventional, The Rum Diary is pre-gonzo Thompson, before the fusion of fact and trippy fantasy that flowered into a brilliant delirium. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 27, 2011
There isn't a sophisticated or "adult" perspective to be found in The Rum Diary. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertOct 26, 2011
We have the feeling that Kemp/Thompson saw much of life through the bottom of a dirty glass and did not experience it with any precision. The film duplicates this sensation, not with much success. Read full review
63
Orlando SentinelRoger MooreOct 26, 2011
Though it only rarely reaches the level of gonzo farce that it might have been, "Diary" is still an agreeably drunken stagger through the novel Thompson based on his formative year as a writer. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierOct 28, 2011
Luckily, the cast is comfortable going with the flow. Ribisi is amusingly corrosive, while Jenkins and Rispoli are sweaty, cigar-chomping movie-journalist archetypes. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 27, 2011
A mild lark disguised as a wild bender, The Rum Diary is also a touching tribute to Thompson himself. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyOct 27, 2011
In every move, Depp makes you believe this was a passion project for the actor, one he dedicates to Thompson. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid FearOct 25, 2011
You can't deny the fun of seeing Depp retro-construct a muted version of his Vegas mugging like De Niro riffing on Brando's Don Corleone. (His reaction to swigging homemade rum is worth the price of admission alone.) Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithOct 28, 2011
The legend of Thompson is immortal, though, and it'll fall to each generation to jam him into its own mold. Depp and Robinson's view is that Thompson was like a mullet: a party in the back but all business upfront. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 27, 2011
The weakest link here is Heard, who possesses the icy cool of Kim Novak but whose character never quite comes into fuller focus than as a hyper-sexualized object of desire. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 27, 2011
That the movie is leisurely and unconventional is all part of its charm, too - until it isn't anymore. The movie is a tale of corruption, but then it's not. It's a love story, but no, not quite. Later, it flirts with becoming a great journalism tale, or at least a whimsical journalism tale, but that vein leads nowhere, too. Nor is it much of anything else. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrOct 27, 2011
The Rum Diary has been retroactively Hunter S. Thompson-ized. And not for the better. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOct 27, 2011
There are times when the story behind the making of a film is more interesting than the finished product. This is one of those occasions. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesOct 27, 2011
Despite some scattered moments of bad craziness involving the hero and his drinking buddies (Michael Rispoli, Giovanni Ribisi), the spine of the story is no strange and terrible saga but a conventional morality tale. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanOct 26, 2011
To the audience, this stuff seems like awfully old news. We're supposed to be witnessing the birth of a great journalist, but Hunter S. Thompson, as his career went on, got swallowed up by his mystique as an outlaw of excess. In The Rum Diary, that myth becomes an excuse for a movie to go slumming. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedOct 25, 2011
Johnny Depp is dismally miscast as the alter ego of the rebellious author with the "screw you" attitude. Read full review
50
Village VoiceJ. HobermanOct 25, 2011
The Rum Diary could use a shot of the mania that fueled Terry Gilliam's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." As deadpan as he is, Depp could use a crazed Benicio Del Toro to complement his cool. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerOct 25, 2011
The Rum Diary, Bruce Robinson's amorphous hodgepodge of a film, wants to be many things: period recreation, social commentary, morality play, romance, an insider look at the newspaper game. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyOct 22, 2011
The Rum Diary remains a relatively mild diversion, not at all unpleasant but neither compelling nor convulsive. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovOct 27, 2011
What The Rum Diary lacks in narrative astonishment it almost makes up for in boozy charm. Depp, Ribisi, and Rispoli are a sight to behold. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinOct 31, 2011
The Rum Diary has no mighty gonzo wind. Even with a push from its Thompson-worshipping star, Johnny Depp, it leaves our freak flag limp. Read full review
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