J. Kessels

It is clear that De Bruyn and J. KESSELS envisaged a Dutch version of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (Terry Gilliam, 1998), with fat snacks instead of heavy drugs, but at least as much chaos and paranoia. Gilliams film was also based on a literary source and told about a crazy road trip by the author himself. But in the case of FEAR AND LOATHING, Hunter S. Thompson had more or less copied what he himself had experienced, Drug Visions et al. P.F. Thomése turned things around. He wrote himself in a made-up story and made it into a post-modern joke. In the book that joke works: the reader reads how the writer writes the story he reads. It is the Droste effect for the advanced. But now that the medium has been turned into film, that effect disappears. Without the rawness of FEAR AND LOATHING and without the stratification of Thoméses original joke, J. KESSELS is ultimately quite one-dimensional. Review from film magazine schokkend nieuws