So I have seen  what will be the last screen outing for the Doctor.                                                                                                                                   A whimsical precious affair, the film is somehow not quite as warm looking as Puerto Rico’s average of 28 toasty degrees centigrade; it was a cold set of images to view mostly, maybe it was the everyone else looking right and Mr Depp just always shining out as being too clean, is each persons view to see or not.                                                                                                            The lack of Hunters internal monologue would have been a zen monk like blow to the whole film, the constant worried commentary on his own life is what made his volumes appeal, there was a person in there, a panicky twitching person unsafe at the idea of being committed to pages,  but  when the film failed to give me the good doctors internal monologue, rum, herbaceous fun and my mind placed it  in, luckily.                                                                                                                                                     It’s a little diet coke on the initial gonzo element although more a mad form of journalism at the books time of writing, but even so, they have taken a third of his crazed compliant calories and rewritten them out, wether in production hell getting it off the ground in production hell or just really inconsiderate editing , that 30% less gonzo the film has become from the book gives you a more high society slick 1950’s flick, instead of some gritty hopeless tragedy in paradise.

Its got nods to what the book attempts to sit you down and get you to view,  but never really jumps across and grabs your collar screaming about how the ice buckets empty and how its your turn to fill it,  mind the squid, I don’t know how long he’s been here , it may have settled in, careful man its watching us.   Kinda of way.

Like, its gonzo its hunter, but just the diet coke version, not in a fear and loathing comparison, but in direct comparison to the power and effect the book undeniably has,  kemps fall from his natural proving ground isn’t laid in harshly enough, the book brought me to disgust, a mesmerised rum soaked relentless rampage from grace to the first heartbeat of lust’s light at the end of its sticky awkward tunnel.

The film, took me respectfully through the books events, somehow feeling hollow without its I canne say,  ”soul” as the soul is there but its behind glass, at £23.46p for you to see, but if you’ve read the book, and your experienced, you should see this film with the correct amount of rum and some love for the doctor, at the end of the tunnel you’ll hear a voice, punctuated by smoking pauses throughout,  turning the last lamp off.

And laughing at you for thinking there was a hand in the darkness to begin with.

. g.