On the Road (2012)

Whatever you do, read the book and avoid this. The whole brilliance and magic of the book is completely lost in this movie. Not only that, but the casting is not great. Dean Moriarty in particular is very hollow, very forced.No doubt the people who made this film are fans of the book, but the book is where this story lives, not the screen. The translation to screen is very flat and dull.The book is an excellent read. The flow and style of the words is fun, and you feel like you're riding along with their adventures. This movie however, shares none of the charm even though it tries hard.

So, to be honest here I neither have read the book nor I care about its content. I am here to express my opinion on the movie itself without taking in consideration any linkings between the film and Kerouac's novel.Well, at first I had no high expectations about the movie as I tend to "snob" youth oriented stories. However, I have a HUGE crush on Stewart so I gave it a try. I have to say I am amazed. I don't't really know from where to begin. From the outstanding performances of our three protagonists? From the "escape reality" 50's climate of beat generation? I think I'll start from the overall atmosphere of the film. And yes, I am talking about the unstoppable hearts and minds of the youth, that actually dare to seek happiness and ignore the risks of failure. Cause that's what the whole movie is about. About escaping. Road tripping, marijuana, alcohol, sex, jazz and lack of money are the movies ingredients to depict beat generation. And they definitely made it.Far more than a typical "youth madness film", 'On The Road' fills the viewer with nostalgia and crave about the gone past. About the years of innocence and creativity. About our lost selves who seek redemption throughout our living space but they are well hidden into the "normal" or the "reasonable" that society put on our ways as an obstacle to find the true beauty on our existence. A movie about mettle and will to live and to reach the well-kept freedom in ourselves. A hidden masterpiece of our generation.

In the modern age, time spent travelling and living hedonistically has become part of our standard rite of passage. But when Jack Karouac set off on his voyage across America in the immediate post-war years, he was doing something altogether more dangerous, more exciting; and his fictionalised autobiography, 'On the Road', provided an inspiration to the world that followed him. Walter Salles made a great film about another young man who goes out travelling ('The Motorcycle Diaries', his portrayal of the youth of Che Guevera), but his version of 'On the Road' lacks the same impact. Partly, there's the purposelessness to the story, which the film dodges, not entirely successfully, with the suggestion that the life lived was validated by the fact that it was subsequently written about. Secondly, it seems that at least one idea that's supposed to be animating the plot is the character of Dean Moriaty, inspirational and yet out of control, but Dean, as portrayed in this film, simply comes across as a good-looking jerk. Indeed, all the characters seem a little too good-looking for literally penniless men who've spent whatever little they have had on booze and drugs; and the homosexual element, that was a major subtext in the lives of many of the beat poets, is not absent but is downplayed. Ultimately, the film paints a picture of life on the road, but doesn't make it very interesting. This is "beat" as in "beats a day job", but not much more.

On the Road (French: Sur la route) is a 2012 Brazilian-French-Canadian adventure drama film directed by Walter Salles. It is an adaptation of the 1957 novel of the same name by Jack Kerouac. The film stars an ensemble cast featuring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen. The story is based on the years Kerouac spent travelling the United States in the late 1940s with his friend Neal Cassady and several other figures who would go on to fame in their own right, including William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. 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 of themselves