Review: For No Good Reason

City Paper grade: B

With its violently twisted caricatures and explosive splatters of paint, Ralph Steadman’s art feels like something vomited up from the darkest corners of his psyche. Perhaps that’s why someone who creates from such a place of anger comes across as genial and self-effacing, but it ultimately means that Charlie Paul’s documentary on Steadman is less revealing than the work itself. Steadman’s fate was sealed in 1969, when he received an assignment to accompany Hunter S. Thompson to cover the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan’s Monthly. The cartoonist’s gleefully anguished, leeringly satirical drawings became the iconic images of Gonzo over the next few decades after the two re-teamed for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and other works. The men themselves maintained a tempestuous relationship, though Steadman offers an emotional epitaph for his friend and nemesis during the course of the film. It’s one of few moments where Paul doesn’t get in the way of his material, feeling the need to impersonate his subject’s work by distorting and cluttering his interviews and stock footage with manic visual clutter. Even more distracting is the constant presence of Johnny Depp, who has positioned himself as the caretaker of Thompson’s legacy since starring in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing adaptation. For Steadman devotees (like yours truly), the doc is valuable for its glimpses of the artist at work and documentation of his early years photographing and interpreting the haunted faces of New York’s skid row. For newcomers, better to seek out Steadman’s work and get to know him through his vitriolic creations rather than his amiable reminiscences.