emma-06418

Gonzo Girl (2023)

Shallow and Poorly Written

There are numerous films depicting the life of a writer. While some have substance, Gonzo Girl is a shallow and poorly written depiction of a novel based on a writer's experience as Hunter S. Thompson's assistant.

The film's only redeeming quality is a knock-out performance by Willem Dafoe, and while I'm happy to watch him for two hours, I'd rather unearth the 1993 disaster that was Body of Evidence than sit through a film that pretends to be deep, artistic, and edgy, only to fail miserably at all three.

Gonzo Girl is supposed to be about a young woman's journey into the writer's life as she takes an assistant writer's position, agreeing to help a much older man (fading literary star) work on the novel he's been avoiding. Yawn.

Tropes aside, the film manages to do the exact opposite of what it intends, and instead of giving the young, female protagonist agency, follows her as she allows herself to be humiliated, exploited, and objectified.

Perhaps the moral is that, just as writers are told to write what they know, filmmakers should make films about subjects they are familiar with. Otherwise you end up with Gonzo Girl: a Hollywood-ized piece of cinematic garbage that desperately wants to be illuminating and fails miserably.