Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Critic Reviews

It may start off as a lighthearted, excess-filled, party-road-trip movie, but Depp is reigned in a little towards the end as his character (a stand-in for Thompson) poetically bemoans the sad failure of the late-60s ideals and values.

More headache than head trip.

This is the best acid-inspired movie since Roger Corman's The Trip - and it is a darn sight more accurate in its depiction [of] the highs and the lows, the terrible confusion alternating with lucidity, the excitement that gives way to paranoia.

...he first hour of the film is as successful as anything I've ever seen or read at conveying how the world looks to the drugged.

Years from now, it will be reappraised as a misunderstood masterpiece. Well, this is one American critic who's not waiting until years from now.

Gilliam shows that there is something appealing about drug highs. It wouldn't be honest to say otherwise. And, yes, they'll destroy you. It's honest about that too.

Unlike Trainspotting, Fear and Loathing doesn't shock or fascinate. It simply disgusts and repels.

A bizarre masterpiece that invents a brilliantly skewed perspective and sustains it for a nearly impossible 117 minutes.

About as enjoyable as a bad trip.

If Gilliam was intending to create a film that would disgust, disorient and eventually irritate, then this one's a bona-fide masterpiece - but don't expect me to sit through it ever again.

...has an incongruous, stream-of-consciousness tang that requires just the right mood to enjoy.