Review of On the Road (2012) by Walter M — 07 Jan 2013

At the beginning of "On the Road," Sal Paradise(Sam Riley) is staying with his mother(Marie-Ginette Guay) in Ozone Park while recovering from his father's death and his own illness. Distracting him from reading 'Swann's Way' is news of the legendary Dean Moriarty(Garrett Hedlund) coming to town with his 16-year old bride Marylou(Kristen Stewart). Upon meeting him, Sal and his friend Carlo(Tom Sturridge) are suitably impressed and everybody becomes friends. But when Dean and Marylou head back to Denver, only Carlo accompanies them, as Sal apparently requires a written invitation to heed the siren call of the west. Once there, he finds the domestic situation has shifted with Dean now together with Camille(Kirsten Dunst) while Carlo still can't get laid.

"On the Road" is not a bad movie per se but it is disappointing, considering the director is Walter Salles who did such an excellent job several years back with adapting "The Motorcycle Diaries" to the screen. While "The Motorcycle Diaries" inspired me to want to overthrow a Latin American dictatorship, "On the Road," by comparison, could make even a fan of the book like myself wonder what all the fuss was about. It's not the actors' fault(Kristen Stewart is in particularly fine form) and I like that the movie does not shy away from the frank sexuality. No, it goes wrong by making the movie about the writing of the book, rather than the story itself, which takes a lot of the life out of it in a self-congratulatory gesture. Admittedly, David Cronenberg went the same route with "Naked Lunch" but there he had to, since as a friend once put it, one almost has to be a heroin addict to be able to read Burroughs, but no such excuse extends to "On The Road" due to Kerouac's cleanly written prose.