Oct. 05, 2003 - 10:02 pm
i saw this film for the first time a couple of years after it had come out at the theater. basically until i saw it tonight i had forgotten the entire plot. all i remembered was a couple of scenes and a lot of insanity based on drug use by the main characters. that's pretty much all that goes on. i can see why i couldn't remember very much.
basically a journalist and his large latino/samoan attorney go out to Las Vegas to cover a motorbike race of some sort in 1971. they take along with them a huge collection of drugs and end up experiencing all sorts of insanity throughout the trip. they act like idiots and really don't care about much of anything. they run up huge hotel bills on room service, threaten people with everything from knives to microphones, try to keep from killing each other in their drug-induced stupors, and wreck multiple rented cars.
this film is just hilariously funny at parts, but at other parts you wonder why you're watching it. with nonstop insanity it's impossible to make a film constantly funny or constantly entertaining. there's no logic to insanity, so it's basically impossible to convey an emotion consistently to your audience.
generally i'm a huge fan of Terry Gilliam's films, but this one i've never been that gung ho on. it's definitely worth seeing and has some very quotable lines in it, but i don't think i could bring myself to watch it again any time soon. it makes me feel too nihilistic.
a couple of good quotes from the film:
"How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car? If so, well, we'll just have to cut his head off and bury him somewhere, 'cause it goes without saying that we can't turn him loose. He'd report us at once to some kind of outback Nazi law enforcement agency and they'll run us down like dogs. Jesus, did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me?"
and
"Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor function. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it."