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
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