On the Road (2012)
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Reviews Counted: 138
Fresh: 61 | Rotten: 77
Beautiful to look at but a bit too respectfully crafted, On the Road doesn't capture the energy and inspiration of Jack Kerouac's novel.
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 19
Beautiful to look at but a bit too respectfully crafted, On the Road doesn't capture the energy and inspiration of Jack Kerouac's novel.
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Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 8,760
Movie Info
Based on Jack Kerouc's beloved American novel, On The Road is the story of Sal Paradise, an aspiring New York writer, and Dean Moriarty, a devastatingly charming ex-con, married to the very liberated and seductive Marylou. Sal and Dean bond instantly instantly upon meeting. Determined not to get locked in to a constricted life, the two friends cut their ties and take to the road with Marylou. Thirsting for freedom, the three young people head off in search of the world, of other encounters, and
Cast
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Garrett Hedlund
Dean MOriarty/Neal C... -
Sam Riley
Sal Paradise/Jack Ke... -
Kristen Stewart
Marylou/LuAnne Hende... -
Kirsten Dunst
Camille/Carolyn Cass... -
Viggo Mortensen
Old Bull Lee, Old Bu... -
Amy Adams
Jane/Joan Vollmer -
Tom Sturridge
Carlo Marx/Allen Gin... -
Alice Braga
Terry/Bea Franco -
Marie-Ginette Guay
Ma Paradise -
Elisabeth Moss
Galatea Dunkel/Helen... -
Danny Morgan
Ed Dunkle/Al Hinkle -
Steve Buscemi
Tall Thin Salesman
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On the Road Trailer & Photos
All Critics (139) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (61) | Rotten (77)
It's not a wreck of a movie; it's not a sleek race car either. But there's heat to be felt here.
Top CriticWalter Salles's warm but strangely staid adaptation of a piece of literature that was never meant to be tamed as cinema.
"On the Road" is something of a sprawling mess, but then so is the novel.
It took more than half a century, but Jack Kerouac's autobiographical cult novel of bohemian youth in postwar America has reached the screen in wonderful form.
Against all odds, a surprisingly effective movie.
In Salles, screenwriter Jose Rivera and company's effort to get the details right, they only get so far. And it's not quite far enough.
Salles can't recreate the feeling of finding oneself in Kerouac's prose
It's hard to imagine how such an exciting book became such a boring movie.
A booze-soaked, drug-riddled, sex-filled escapade with no real point about young people casting off whatever yokes chain them and seeing what's out there. It captures the pure exhilaration of freedom for its own sake.
If our On the Road is a barely coherent tightrope act - a fizzy word drunk stand-up speed-rapped by an aspiring poet posing as a dumb saint prole - then it's tough to take this pretty version, populated by Gap models in retro Americana fashions.
The movie version of "On the Road" won't have the impact on a person that the book ever did. But it does go some way to explaining why the book did.
At just over two hours, its challenging to stay invested in the movie and its choppy, rambling storyline. As a filmic experience, however, it serves as an interesting companion piece to the similarly challenging 'The Master.'
Not a film for the masses....the story is laced with sex, drugs and nudity, but it is a capable character study of a group of young friends who could be part of any generation.
A pretty disappointment.
Considering the central characters would become the dominant figures of the Beat movement, it's unbelievable how pedestrian their antics prove, not to mention how through-the-roof the picture's corn quotient is. Could the soundtrack have more bongo music?
Salles approaches Kerouac's raw, restless and spontaneous work in such a staid and conservative manner that the movie might as well be a lesser Merchant-Ivory production from the team's late-'90s period of decline.
The filmmakers are intelligent and gifted, but they fail to provide a satisfying answer to the question facing anyone who might want to make a movie version of 'On the Road,' namely: Why bother?
Even Stewart, exuding more passion than in all five Twilight movies, registers more fully than the preening leads.
Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation bible "On the Road" was experimental, experiential and ephemeral in a way Walter Salles' film never captures or portrays.
If the movie weren't so visually eloquent at evoking post-war America, it might prove unbearable.
Salles aims to do for Jack Kerouac what he did for Che Guevara, i.e., to make him and his pals rock stars.
What Salles gets just right is the sense of speed - of lives lived too fast, of the blacktop passing before their windshield in a blur.
This pretty period-pictorial companion piece to the novel fatally misses out on the brain-firing raw buzz that Kerouac felt and passed on to his readers...
Hedlund is too pretty and not quite as maniacally charming as Dean. Riley's Kerouac is even more apprehensive than the one in the novel, and that raspy voice he uses is distracting.
The film has a dreamy nocturnal lyricism, especially in scenes of Moriarty's streamlined 1949 Hudson Commodore hurtling across America's lamp-lit highways.
Audience Reviews for On the Road
Super Reviewer
The story is pretty dull. There's a lot of sex in it, but somehow that's boring too.
The only character I cared about was the one played by Kirsten Dunst, and she's barely in it. Kristen Stewart is good as always, but it's a real nothing role for her.
Sal was annoying and his accent sounds affected. Dean was a pig and I couldn't stand him.
It's just a lot of sex and travelling, and light on actual story. I'm sure the book was better, but I'm in no hurry to read it after two hours of this tedium.
Super Reviewer
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- Sal Paradise/Jack Kerouac: The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. The ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.
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- Marylou/LuAnne Henderson: Hop in the water's fine.
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- Camille/Carolyn Cassady: You're sick of me, and you're sick of work!
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| What Is Holding Up The Release Date For This movie??? | 5 months ago | 5 |
| How can you get it so wrong? | 44 days ago | 0 |
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December 18, 2012:
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Foreign Titles
- On the Road - Unterwegs (DE)
- Sur la route (FR)
