On The Road can best be likened to one of the highways and byways traversed by the characters in the movie: long, meandering, occasionally hazardous, long, full of interesting sights and sounds, and long.
Fortunately it’s not the interminable sort of long one encounters in a movie like The Master or 30 Minutes or Less, in which you’re hoping, begging for the projector to break or there to be a fire or an asteroid that strikes the theater, anything to save you from seeing the rest of the movie. Watching Sal Paradise and his pals bounce from place to place across the United States, you are just occasionally struck by the thought “Wait, is this actually going anywhere?”
Evidently I’m not the only person to think the film was a bit long: it premiered at 137 minutes, and has subsequently been cut down to 124.
The movie is about the love story between Sal and Dean. It’s not obvious at first because Dean is in love with Mary Lou (and then just everything else that moves), but eventually Dean moves past the sex and you can see in Sal’s eyes that Dean is really the most important thing to him, although not in a sexual or romantic way. Rather, his interest in Dean stems from his need to write, and Dean certainly comes up big in the inspiration department. Dean is the center of a hurricane of chaos, changing everything around him. Essentially every character in the movie interacts either directly or indirectly because of Dean. Garrett Hedlund was a brilliant casting choice and delivers with a fantastic performance; he needs to be the most charismatic and charming person on the screen at all times and he is. Even when Dean fucks up or does something shitty (spoilers: this happens a lot), you aren’t mad at him so much as disappointed because you want to be his friend and he’s making it hard for you to feel good about him when he’s being a shit.
Kristen Stewart has a prominent role in the movie relative to characters that aren’t Sal or Dean, and does a good enough job that you wish she was in it more. There are flashes of good acting, but she doesn’t have enough lines and a lot of her screen time seems is as a sexpot, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it exactly taxing. One exits the movie wishing there had been more K-Stew.
Meanwhile, On The Road features just the right amount of Kirsten Dunst, who plays Camille, another romantic interest of Dean’s, which is to say not too much and not too little. Dunst is one of several relatively major actors to play a smaller role in the film (others include Viggo Mortensen, Terrence Howard, and a delightfully crazy Amy Adams). Having major actors play minor roles has the effect of boosting the audience’s interest in new scenes and locales in a long, directionless film, which is a smart move on the part of the filmmakers.
The movie has several funny moments in it; not having read the book, I’m not sure whether to praise Jack Kerouac or the screenwriter (Jose Rivera), but rest assured, they’re there. I will also add that even if Kerouac wrote them originally, several (including one with a trucker and another involving Sal’s mother and a traffic cop) are greatly enhanced due to the editing of the film (which enhances the timing). There aren’t quite enough to balance out the melodramatic moments, sadly, but it’s better than not having them at all.
If you have some time to kill and do not get impatient with movies, you will probably enjoy On The Road. If an ensemble cast, mostly good acting, and pretty cinematography aren’t going to cut it for you, stay away. Not that it would be hard, since it’s in limited release just about everywhere, but still.
"On The Road" opens February 1, 2013 and is rated R. Drama. Directed by Walter Salles. Written by Jack Kerouac, Jose Rivera. Starring Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley.
