Where the Buffalo Roam (1980)

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It was fun to see Bill Murray as HST, having only seen Johnny Depp as HST in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (I watched this movie for the first time recently, Aug 2008). I think he did pretty well, probably better than I expected.The relationship with Lazlo is very much the center of the movie, which I thought was funny/strange/interesting/disturbing, much like the relationship with Acosta in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, only more fun to watch, because Peter Boyle was a genius! How the two played off each other was excellent, and reminded me of HST's relationship with Ralph Steadman in his book "The Curse of Lono", and also Ralph Steadman's book "The Joke's Over: Bruised Memories: Gonzo, Hunter S. Thompson, and Me".Entertaining movie that could have shown more about how HST worked and how GONZO came about. I would recommend it to HST fans only, because they'd know more what to expect (drugs, insanity, "bad craziness", etc.). Other people with other expectations will hate it, especially if they've never read HST, or HAVE read HST and weren't impressed.

WARNING: Insults ahead. Now I'm no movie critic and I don't think these comment things should be taken serious at all considering the majority of the people on this thing sharing their two cents haven't spent any time in a film studies course, creative writing course, and have no real true understanding of the art of film. "Everyone's a critic" and thanks to the internet that statement hasn't been truer.But lets get onto the movie.Any self respecting HUNTER S. THOMPSON fan should stay away from this film. It's a terrible insult to the man and he's even been quoted as saying he liked Murray's performance but that he "was very disappointed in the script. It s*cks – a bad, dumb, low-level, low-rent script." Credit where credit is due Murray does a fantastic job with Hunter's mannerisms but he makes the poor guy out to be some sort of silly cartoon character. Murry certainly could move and maybe talk like Hunter but he looked nothing like him and the writing was cr*p. Now this of course is not Murray's fault since he didn't write the script, and that is his one saving grace.Jack Kroll wrote, in his review for Newsweek magazine, "Screenwriter John Kaye has reduced Thompson's career to a rubble of disjointed episodes, and the relentless mayhem becomes tiresome chaos rather than liberating comic anarchy." Thats the truth right there. If you want to get a real in depth look at the man, read some of the Gonzo letters. I recommend The Proud Highway. A d*mn good documentary would be Fear & Loathing on the Road to Hollywood, which can be found on the Criterion Edition of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (a fantastic representation of Hunter and his work but thats for another comment board).Bottom line folks, the movie is sh*t. It reeks of bitter 80's humor and brain dead writing. Bill Murray is a great actor but he should be ashamed of this film. If you are a true Hunter fan, stay as far away from this film as possible because it degrades him to the level of a sloppy clown, which he was very far from.This movie is for the ignorant Raoul Duke duke and the poor soul who sits in his room all day watching 80's movies and dreaming they could use Doc Brown's time machine to go back to a time where they were considered "normal." Now take all that I say with a grain of salt. I've only taken one Film Studies course so I am no critic of films, but I have read every single Hunter S. Thompson book and seen every documentary that has come out and I can give my honest advice, as a person well versed in the Gonzo world, that this movie is NOT HUNTER S. THOMPSON Mahalo

let's see, first of all i never saw Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to ever hear about Thompson. Nor did ever see Where the Buffalo Roam,I got introduced to Thompson by a friend of mine who gave me the book, Better Than Sex. That was a couple of years of go, the thing about the movie is its up to par with the writing style Thompson had. its not funny to be a comedy, but it isn't that serious either. i enjoyed this movie, i thought it expressed the true gonzo fashion in its raw form. Do i consider myself a fan? Not really, i do have several books by Tompson, I like his writing style. Just remember that films, writing, music, and all other sorts of media is art. just because you don't like the movie, doesn't mean that its that bad. you're probably not educated enough to understand its content, its true meaning.

Both of the HST films have problems. This film's problem is that it is too "screenwritten" (Lazlo replacing The Brown Buffalo, "Blast" Magazine replacing Rolling Stone, etc.) and lacks the weird surrealism that a drug-fueled observation of American culture at the end of the 1960s deserves, if not requires.It does play a bit like Caddyshack, as someone else pointed out, and it's hard to get really invested in the characters. And if you love HST as much as I do, you really do want to get into the characters and in to the story, because it's as important as it is funny. Where the Buffalo Roam is, for the most part, silly. It comes off as more a bunch of sketches than anything else. I did like Bill Murray in the part. The problem is the script, more than anything else.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by contrast, does well with the surrealism and depravity but fails to make the full point I think Thompson was trying to get across - the decadence and over-the-top performances (especially of del Toro) are distracting, and really all of this is supposed to be about the death of the American dream, and the end of what was (to some) the best decade on record, or at least the one where people thought, for a time, they could make something of American life. Both movies hint at this but don't go into it enough, in my opinion.Where the Buffalo Roam captures a little of the sadness and the creeping hopelessness of the early 70s (along with an indication of the hangover awaiting that generation in the 70s), but both movies fall far short of Thompson's books and writing in my opinion.I was particularly saddened that both movies left out the "We're looking for the American dream" bit at the taco stand, because I think that was important, and the F&L Vegas story seems decontextualized without it (in terms of having a fairly serious (and sad) point under all of the humor and excess).In any case, both movies are worth a watch but ultimately unsatisfying. Thompson is still best read. I think a good film about HST can be made, but the right person needs to be at the helm.Richard Linklater or John Sayles, perhaps...someone who isn't going to miss the deeper substance underlying and buttressing the humor. That being said, there are far worse movies you could be watching than either.And like Thompson, it still hasn't gotten weird enough for me.