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Critics Consensus: 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.
Critic Consensus: 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.
All Critics (149) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (66) | Rotten (83)
It's not a wreck of a movie; it's not a sleek race car either. But there's heat to be felt here.
Walter 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.
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.
Director Walter Salles' film is fairly faithful to the source material. It's not going to start a movement, though.
In its base remit of offering a visual realisation of the story and honouring the key themes of the novel and Beat culture, Salles deserves at least a modicum of credit.
Salles' "On the Road" brings this major work back to its original scale: small, intimate and still wild at heart.
[Director Walter] Salles gets the frenetic pace of Beat Generation antics right, but he only hints at Sal's ambivalence about this way of living.
The performances are a key element to enjoying this picture, but it remains slow and sometimes uneventful.
The film feels tame, in part because the subject matter is no longer as shocking as it was in the 50s.
Kristin Stewart reminded me of why I liked her in the first place, in movies like "Into the Wild." Quiet and natural is more her thing, and she was seductive and believable and also oft-nude here.
Salles follows closely the heartbeat and structure of the iconic novel to capture the wild spirit of the Beat Generation, to which he is more than faithful, and so this is an exciting collection of road anecdotes revolving around the friendship between Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady.
Super Reviewer
Sal Paradise goes on the road with Dean Moriarty and company. This film is less than the sum of its parts. In his effort to get the feeling of the Beat Generation, director Walter Salles has some quick edits and some free-wheeling music and some of the lines lifted from Kerouac's novel - all cinematic tricks that should work, but yet there's still something staid about this film. Perhaps it's the gravelly voiced Garrett Hedlund, who seems more focused on the image of Sal than the character, or perhaps it's the hackneyed shoe-horn of a script. Or perhaps Kerouac was never meant to be adapted. Overall, it was worth a shot, but this is one book-to-film adaptation that missed the mark.
The best teacher is experience. Good movie! The cinematography is outstanding, and it is a sight to behold, beautiful landscapes, a smooth, delicate filmic texture. Overall, the film is light on plot. It's mostly character study and exposition. However, that's On the Road. The film is based on a Kerouac stream-of-consciousness novel. It's about his hero worship with Dean and the ultimate disillusionment he feels with him. The conflict and resolution isn't your typical climax and ending of a film. Shaken by the death of his father and discouraged by his stalled career, writer Sal Paradise goes on a road trip hoping for inspiration. While traveling, he is befriended by charismatic and fearless Dean Moriarty and Moriarty's free-spirited and seductive young wife, Marylou. Traveling across the American southwest together, they strive to break from conformity and and search the unknown, and their decisions change the very course of their lives.
Ugh! Mopey people being miserable. That's not entertainment.
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