Review of On the Road (2012) by Palmer R — 13 Oct 2012

I read the book this past winter in anticipation for the film. I knew that there was no way all that detail was going to be translated to screen - at least not perfectly, so I didn't have super high expectations.

The cast - for one - is perfect. Hedlund and Riley play off each other beautifully and both bring so much depth to their characters.

I found Kristen Stewart to be very good in the second half of the film, once her character actually had something to do. And Kirsten Dunst played her small part well also.

I felt that it was very long, however. Not that two hours is uncommon in today's movie world, but in this particular case, two hours was long. It's not a particularly fast paced movie, so the longer, drawn out dialogue scenes - while important - did seem a bit slow.

That being said, I did enjoy it. I thought Walter Salles did a great job of keeping true to the story without needing to add in a lot of Hollywood swag like some directors do these days. It was simple, it was raw and it was real. And it worked.

There is a lot of sex in this movie, for anyone who is not familiar with the book. It almost seems as if that's part of the essence of the story, and that's okay. I'm not usually one for movies that have nudity just for the sake of having nudity, but as frequent (and sometimes explicit) as the scenes in this movie are, at least they had a purpose to them.

My top performance in this movie definitely goes to Garrett Hedllund. Taking aside my bias towards him as an actor anyway, he certainly played the role of Dean Moriarty flawlessly. A character that you should probably hate, but still has so much depth, vulnerability, and emotion that you can't help but almost feel sorry for him. If there are any awards given to this film, I would definitely suggest they go to Garrett.