Review of On the Road (2012) by Darren C — 19 Nov 2012

As a teenager I read "On the road" and dutiful fell under its spell. To me it spoke of travel, freedom and discovery. Getting out of your routine and embracing life. Charmed by Kerouac's prose, I never noticed how shallow and self-destructive the main characters actually were.

Many years have passed since. Nowadays, "On the road" - the movie â" looks like a slice of crystallized history, rather than the vibrant narration of the adventures of the post-war generation.

I think most people know that the book does not really have a plot, but narrates how Sal and Dean (Kerouac and Cassidy alter-egos) aimlessly wandered across the US, consuming many illicit substances, having plenty of casual sex and meeting other similar-minded youngsters along the way.

Some critics complained about the fact that the "greatness" of their generation does not resonate in the movie. I would rather say that perhaps there was not much greatness, but only little more of what is displayed: selfish young men roaming around and caring nothing about anybody.

I do not have a problem with the lack of focus of a story that did not have much to start with, but I have plenty with the tragic miscasting of all the main parts. Anybody knows what Kerouac and Cassidy looked like, but the two leads look nothing like them, nor convey any of the rough masculinity of those boys. Hedlun plays the pivotal Dean part without any of the charisma required by this crazy and super-attractive bad body. Described by Kerouac as "holy" the Dean character merely looks like a meterosexual lost in time. Even worse as Sal/Kerouac is Riley, a thin, charm-free Englishman, with not the physique nor the angst required to play such a well-known personality.

As far as Stewart playing sluttish Marylou and getting first billing and her face on the movie poster⦠I must confess I did not even remember the Marylou character was in the book, so insignificant is her part â" and the part played by any other woman in the narrative and in the life of these men. In any case, she looks nothing like a doll out of the Fifties and her presence is just a piece of promotional strategy, which made me dislike the movie even more.

What is left of the book that defined a generation? The hedonistic discoveries of youngsters who lived very much in the present and selfishly ignored anybody around them. The condescending way women were treated. The dissolution of a "dream" that revolved around getting high and having somebody else paying for billâ¦. Sound a lot like most young generations keep on doing, devoid of any illusory greatness of a life spent running on the road.