Web posted on: Wednesday, May 27, 1998 3:07:11 PM

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- I've been a fan of Hunter S. Thompson's best writing for about 20 years now, so I have to enter a qualifier before I start dissecting "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Terry Gilliam's intentionally confused adaptation of Thompson's nearly psychotic cult novel. I enjoyed huge chunks of the movie and fidgeted uncomfortably through the rest of it, but even if you usually agree with what I write about the films I cover, I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't take 10 minutes of this one.

Like "Naked Lunch" before it, the novel itself is an unfilmable map of a writer's own drug-addled synapses. Getting it "right" is impossible by definition; the very content of the book is based on the terrifying notion that things have gotten so out of hand -- so red-white-and-blue, in the strong-armed, mass-marketed sense of the phrase -- that the only proper response is studied irrationality.

Thompson's sensibility as a writer has always been to raucously announce the horror before him, then mock it with a shrug and another tab of acid ... or whatever illicit substance he has on hand at the moment. He's covering the Apocalypse from within (and sometimes pretty self-servingly, it should be added), but you can't really film an Apocalypse and get away with it, not in conventional movie terms, anyway. You just have to put a saddle on it and try to find some reason for the audience to enjoy the ride.

As Thompson has repeatedly stated, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." With the exception of the usual David Lynch foolishness, Hollywood hasn't released a movie this proudly weird in a long, long time. It's a tricky, partially successful mess, but an often angry one, and I'll take that any day of the week over another feel-good, money-minting "Armageddon," the very existence of which makes "Fear and Loathing"'s dementia all the more laudable.

People have been trying to get this project off the ground practically since the day the book was published back in 1971. The story deals with Thompson's valiant attempt to cover an off-road motorcycle race for "Rolling Stone" magazine while he and his "attorney" (i.e. "possibly hallucinated drug supplier") instead wind up riding a fearful wave of pain and paranoia as the American dream withers and dies in front of them right there on the strip in Vegas.

A gaggle of stars, directors, and studios have shown an interest in trying to wrestle this thing down over the years, and Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro have finally won the contest to play Thompson (or, at least, his altar ego, "Raoul Duke") and the attorney, Dr. Gonzo. But even the version we've ended up with has more than the usual assortment of fingerprints on it.

Alex Cox, who hasn't made a coherent movie since "Sid and Nancy," ended up with a screenplay credit here, but was fired as director shortly before filming was to begin. Gilliam, no master of coherence himself, was brought in at the last minute, and the result is that a lot of the dead-serious post-60s underpinnings to Thompson's work (which were completely ignored in 1980's lamentable "Where the Buffalo Roam," Hollywood's previous stab at taming the author) end up receiving little more than a passing nod.

The big, chunky hallucinations and operatically suicidal ramblings are there, of course, and so is much of the actually-funny black humor, but that thematic bedrock upon which Thompson built his church is something the story can't really do without.

Movies, even lighthearted ones, need a readily identifiable enemy that can create friction, especially when the protagonist is so attuned to possible assault, physical or otherwise. Thompson's doped-up visit to Vegas is anything but light-hearted, but the enemy is never properly portrayed, unless you count tacky Americana as the ultimate evil.

One of the most enjoyable sequences in the book, as well as in the film, is when our heroes clandestinely enter a convention of crew-cutted district attorneys at one of the hotels.

As funny as it is (and it's very funny), the mindlessness of these self-righteous keepers of the flame makes for too easy a target when portrayed on screen. Sure, they're ridiculous, but without more considered social commentary (despite wall-to-wall narration, the movie usually avoids it) their vulgarity is just a distant cousin to Thompson's own inherent loutishness.

Dylan's assertion that "everybody must get stoned" could probably be more precisely read as "I'm stoned and you're not, so I'm better than you." That convenient self-delusion is too often apparent in the movie, but Thompson had the good sense to point the finger at himself periodically in the book.

Like the best music of The Rolling Stones (try "Gimme Shelter" and "You Can't Always Get What You Want," for starters), Thompson's razor-sharp knife cuts both ways. This is what Gilliam and Cox have missed, even as Depp and Del Toro drag their characters through a forest of narcotically-driven self-desecration.

Depp and Del Toro, by the way, are pretty close to spectacular. Depp has Thompson's odd waddle of a walk and loping speech patterns nailed, while Del Toro looks for all the world like one of the bad-apple Hell's Angels who ruined all the fun at Altamont. They're like the Abbott and Costello of the drug culture, infiltrating "straight" society without the slightest gesture towards covering their less-than-altruistic motives.

One of the more horrifyingly funny moments in the film is when the two of them, gassed up from an ether binge (sniffed through a wadded-up American flag, no less) stagger and drool into one of the local night spots. Their brains have slowed to an ugly crawl, but they pay up and are escorted right inside.

A drunk is a drunk, after all, and a drunk with money is even better. Who cares what he's drunk on? This is harsh, biting stuff, but the two actors' performances, no matter how unflinching, can't always raise the material to this desperate level.

Gilliam's movies (like "Brazil" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen") are always too busy by a couple of miles, but feature first-rate production design. This time around, his desire to fit five movies into the frame simultaneously actually adds something worthwhile to the ambiance.

Alex McDowell's sets are like a cross between a malaria dream and a Fellini movie, with Thompson and his attorney's gradual demolition of a couple of fancy suites serving as a visual metaphor for the cultural collapse they're witnessing throughout America as a whole.

There are also some nifty special effects, including a whole cocktail lounge full of tourists who transform into polyester-garbed lizards when the acid kicks in. I admit it'll drive you bonkers after a while, but maybe that's the movie's biggest accomplishment.

Noting that "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" contains lots of drug use is like pointing out that "Star Wars" is full of space ships. There's also loads of profanity, brutality, and a general parade of physical and intellectual grotesques. I don't know your mom, but I'm willing to bet the pot roast that she would not be amused. Rated R, with a vengeance. 120 minutes.