On the Road (2012)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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 film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

1) The screenwriter did not understand the main characters of the book, especially Dean. He added poor quality dialogue. That dialogue was related to sexuality. At certain points in the film Dean described sex acts that he engaged in that were never mentioned in the book. He described them in a way that would have never come out of the character's mouth as Kerouac created him. This poor quality language destroyed the depth of the character within 60 or so seconds. The screenwriter put 90% of the focus on sex, and made a gay sex act happen, which never occurred in the book, apparently to get some gay sex on screen. He had Marylou give Dean and Sal hand jobs at the same time in the movie which never occurred in the book. The screenwriter took the shift off the very important things that "On the Road," is about. On the road is about America in the 1940's being a spiritual land of immense beauty and power. It is about how Sal, and even more so Dean were completely intoxicated by this spirituality and beauty. The story is about "it." One aspect of "it," was that Dean loved women very deeply and was crazy about them. The other aspect was to be intoxicated by every unusual character that Dean came across on the road. In the story Dean is wild, intoxicated on life, and grooving on the world including the people, the music, and his friend Sal all the time. This brings me to my second point.2) The actor that played Dean was not able to catch this constant intense spiritual jazzy American fever at all. Therefore nothing was accomplished.3) The book is really about this holy land of America. Sometimes there is an amazing tune that a songwriter needs to put words to, just so that the tune can get noticed. But the words are actually secondary. In a way Dean and Sal are almost secondary. They are a vehicle for traveling through every aspect of the mystical American landscape, its people, and its culture. The movie does not convey this most important aspect of "On the Road," effectively. To do so much more focus would have had to be put on people and places that Dean and Sal observe as they travel.To conclude, once again, "On the Road," is about American spirituality. A kind of spirituality that miraculously could have occasionally been found by the wild and free youth of the time. The film failed to capture this, possibly because the screen writer did not understand what this American spirituality is. He did not understand the essence of "On the Road."

Young writer Sal Paradise has his life shaken by the arrival of free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his girl, Marylou (Kristen Stewart). As they travel across the country, they encounter a mix of people who each impact their journey indelibly.Apparently, Kristen Stewart is now an adult. Following her rise to stardom with "Twilight", she could have been stuck doing some silly movies. Box office numbers were big, but critics largely panned the franchise. Then this comes along...Of course, among the right people, "On the Road" is a classic. I am surprised that James Franco did not force himself into the starring role.

In the modern age, time spent travelling and living hedonistically has become part of our standard rite of passage. But when Jack Karouac set off on his voyage across America in the immediate post-war years, he was doing something altogether more dangerous, more exciting; and his fictionalised autobiography, 'On the Road', provided an inspiration to the world that followed him. Walter Salles made a great film about another young man who goes out travelling ('The Motorcycle Diaries', his portrayal of the youth of Che Guevera), but his version of 'On the Road' lacks the same impact. Partly, there's the purposelessness to the story, which the film dodges, not entirely successfully, with the suggestion that the life lived was validated by the fact that it was subsequently written about. Secondly, it seems that at least one idea that's supposed to be animating the plot is the character of Dean Moriaty, inspirational and yet out of control, but Dean, as portrayed in this film, simply comes across as a good-looking jerk. Indeed, all the characters seem a little too good-looking for literally penniless men who've spent whatever little they have had on booze and drugs; and the homosexual element, that was a major subtext in the lives of many of the beat poets, is not absent but is downplayed. Ultimately, the film paints a picture of life on the road, but doesn't make it very interesting. This is "beat" as in "beats a day job", but not much more.

I joined IMDb just to give this movie the higher rating it deserves. I love the book and I loved the movie. Obviously, 'On The Road' is a very difficult book to turn into a film: it's disjointed, psychological/ philosophical/pseudo-religious, thin on linear plot, and very much rooted in Kerouac's own voice. You can't really make a movie of the book in the normal sense, but I thought this movie was totally true to to the _spirit_ of the book, which is all we can really ask as film goers. If at times the film seems meandering, disjointed, or focused on conveying a general feeling rather than on moving the plot forward (i.e. the scenes of American landscapes rolling by a car window or being plodded through on foot), that's because the book was too. I was sad to see this rated as low as it is. This is a fine piece of work by all concerned. Riley and (especially) Hedlund were both great in their respective roles. They left me feeling I had met some old friends at last. Bravo!