Fans of documentary cinema often bemoan the lack of stylistic ambition that seems to be the norm for the film. Point and shoot cinematography. Talking heads. Informational graphics. Stock music cues. While For No Good Reason is plagued with issues, formal banality is not one of them. This is a movie in love with animation, with recreation, with playful layering of images, with anything that can enliven a story about a man who is, by his own admission, not much more than pleasantly polite in person.

You might not know Ralph Steadman, but you know his work. If Hunter S. Thompson was the voice of gonzo journalism, Steadman was its face. An accomplished cartoonist, Steadman’s art accompanied many of Thompson’s most infamous articles and books, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But his work extends beyond Thompson’s sphere of influence. It includes pieces as diverse as an “autobiography” of Leonardo da Vinci, a book of dogs, a book of cats, and a whole host of deeply angry pieces of political satire.

Steadman’s art doesn’t seem drawn so much as it’s sprayed onto a canvas, as if from the jugular of some businessman asshole whose throat he just slit. Spatters and mists characterize much of his work, and splotting and spraying paint is a big part of his creative process. From chaos, he finds meaning, and turns these unfortunate shapes into unfortunate-looking people and beasts. Caricature is a hallmark of political cartooning, and Steadman’s stuff looks like a caricature of the idea of caricature, with body parts deformed into painful-looking features. It is striking and horrifying, and always recognizable as his own.

The best compliment I can pay For No Good Reason is that it feels infused with Steadman’s spirit, and not just because his art rolls through the screen on parade. Despite being 15 years in the making, it comes across as very slapdash, jumping from one idea to the next without discernible intention. One moment, Steadman is talking about his youth in England. The next, he’s demonstrating how he draws. And then he’s reminiscing about some manic episode with Thompson. It is dizzying, but it successfully puts the viewer in the seat of a gonzo brain. At its worst, it seems pointlessly obtuse, such as when three separate trips to different sports locales are edited together (“Wait, are they in Hawaii or Kentucky right now?”).

Thompson looms large over the movie, and while Steadman had a substantial career outside his collaborations with the writer, he still can’t seem to escape that shadow. For his part, Steadman seems content to remember his friend. I don’t know enough about Thompson to know whether any of the anecdotes about him or home movies shown of him in the doc are new, but they are certainly entertaining. Still, this is supposed to be Steadman’s movie, and telling us stuff we basically already know about Thompson (yes, he was nutty, we get it) isn’t terribly productive, especially since Thompson has had his own documentaries.

In one stylized recreation, Steadman dips his pen into an inkpot that sits next to a full shot glass, a wonderful image. In another sequence, polaroid photos with animation or talking heads are superimposed over old still pictures, an effect that I liked. But for every cool touch, there’s one that feels distracting or useless. That’s For No Good Reason as a movie, really – equal parts cool and lame. The pointless presence of Johnny Depp, to whom Steadman is supposedly talking for all this time (even though the film forgets this conceit frequently) doesn’t help things. The doc will certainly make you want to find a book of Steadman’s work, and perhaps even read some of Thompson’s writing again. But doing either of those things feels like a better way to experience true gonzo-ness than this movie.

Grade: C