How sad is this?

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I re-watched this movie lately and was (again) somehow disappointed - the movie felt over-stretched, somehow artificial and mostly I was just bored. As the cinematography and the cast are working well, also the nice jazz and the occasional recitation of Kerouac's words fitted well, I wondered why I can't enjoy this movie more.Imo this movie got one main problem - On The Road is imo mainly a work of poetry, relying on the power of words, the emotions and pictures it evokes in the reader. Second, I think this movie should have been made in the 60s or 70s, now in times of Youporn, legalization of weed in the U.S. etc. etc. all these guys boozing, making free love etc. are not looking like rebels or avant-garde but low-life junkies. Also, literature nowadays is mainly entertainment, there are no real ground-shaking writers like Henry Miller, Kerouac, Sartre, Kafka etc. anymore. Today people read Harry Potter, Twilight etc. Literature in the beginning and in the mid of the past century was important to society, like HipHop to the 90s, nowadays it is mostly just business and giving some entertainment to the masses in their leisure time. Also jazz today just don't work as an expression of rebellion, in times where even bands like Sonic Youth are mainstream, and certain black metal artists cooperate with classical orchestras. For me, I am no lover of jazz or have any interest in it, the music sounds mostly like music for the elevator or some background noise for shopping in a hipster store. The book, the words of Keroauc I would recommend to everybody to read, but if you want to watch some aimless guys and gals boozing and drugging themselves to death, watch the semi-autobiography of Charles Bukowski called Barfly from 1987 with Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway - it is much more powerful and much more honest as the adaption of On The Road on the screen is. Booze, drugs, sex - in the 50s the Beat generation was the predecessor of the Love & Peace movement, as the movie does not give us any "feel" of that rebellion and conflict against the rigid rules at those times where the book was written (e.g. the separation of the races), this movie is mostly redundant.

A movie is definitely in big trouble if the cameo roles (and there are many here) are way way more interesting than the movie is by a long shot. And yes, this movie is that movie.It has pretty good cinematography, very competent actors all round. Each minute if taken in itself could be part of a great movie … but string them all together all 143 minutes of it (and I saw the long version!) …. it becomes one pointless uninteresting movie.The many many sex scenes are unnecessary and pointless. It's the only movie that could make Kristen Stewart wanking off two guys, all three totally naked while speeding down the road … totally inconsequential and just plain contrived and boring.If this movie had come out when the characters it was based on were still fresh and hot … like in the 60s … it could have been of some interest. In the 21st century … it's passé. Seeing a bunch of unremarkable everyday deadbeats wasting their pointless life on pointless things … who cares. Deadbeats traveling around doing irresponsible selfish nonsensical things while simply backstabbing and laying waste to one another … just not interesting at all.But the worse of it is, it's really not about the material nor the time nor the premise. The main problem is really just mundane uninspired direction and scripting (though technically competent but not great). A movie like this needs to take on a very different inspired approach that would bring out the freshness and the meaning of these meaningless souls straying in the American landscape in the beat era (and not just come across as ordinary boring deadbeats who you'd rather not bother to know). But the opportunity was lost on the director and the scriptwriter who just did the technically competent 'tell it like it is' …. boring and uninteresting be damned. And well it is. In truly competent hands, this sort of movie could sparkle, especially with such a good cast and cameos. As it is, the cast efforts …. simply wasted.Quoting or mumbling poetry and having percussion jazz just doesn't cut it … just makes it come across as desperate, pretentious, uninspired. (Btw - the percussion jazz was nice, but out of place in this movie and comes across as misplaced and distracting) Truly, what a waste!

It's the late 1940s, and young writer Sal Paradise's father has just died. He hangs out with friends in bars and struggles with writers' block. But when he meets charismatic Dean, Sal decides to follow his new friend's lead and take to the road on a cross-country trip across America.Let's start with the good, shall we? The supporting cast are excellent, and special mention should be given to Tom Sturridge. He plays Carlo (Allen Ginsberg's alter ego), who spends much of the film intensely brooding over his broken heart, his writing, his wild ambitions. A quiet scene in which he tries to articulate his feelings towards Dean is one of my favourite in the whole film. Elisabeth Moss and Amy Adams also have blink-and-you-miss-it supporting roles, and they both easily outshine their higher-billed co-stars.Unfortunately, that's about all the praise I can muster.We are informed, time and time again, that Dean is charismatic, charming, infectiously reckless and dangerous and sexy. Sal, Carlo and Marylou can't get enough of him. He makes their lives better, more complete, more exciting. And yet Hedlund, for whatever reason, completely fails to shine on the screen. Good looking, yes, but charming he is not.Reading the film's trivia page, previous attempted adaptations of Kerouac's book had the likes of Marlon Brando and Brad Pitt in mind to play the role of Dean. It makes me disappointed, embarrassed and slightly angry that the film's producers, in their search for our generation's equivalent to Brando and Pitt, settled on Garrett Hedlund. Was there really no one else available? What about Aaron Taylor-Johnson? Or Sam Claflin? Or Miles Teller, maybe? Or anyone who actually manages to make beautiful lines of prose sound more exciting than the phonebook? Objections have also been raised about some of the other main cast members, but although none of them - with the exception of Sturridge - lit the screen alight, none of them ruined the film either.But of course, this film was always going to disappoint. It was always going to disappoint because it was built on a shaky foundation. The film's underlying problem, the problem that was always going to be a problem even if everything else was perfect, was what the script isn't good enough.Any film worth watching tells you what its characters want. It's a character's pursuit of his/her personal goal that drives the whole plot. There was no sense here that the characters wanted anything in particular. There was talk of writing, but only in passing, as a way to spark a conversation in between drags of a joint. The characters talked, and laughed, and drank, and danced and travelled. But none of it really mattered because, in the end, none of them really changed.I'm aware, of course, that Kerouac's book is a much-loved piece of literature, which leads me to conclude that it must be much, much better than this film. If that's the case, then fine. Read the book. Love the book. But it's not enough to trust that an audience's love for a story told in one medium will necessarily transfer into a love for the story in a different medium. The film feels like it relies too heavily on people knowing - and liking - the characters of the book, and in doing so fails to deliver an adaptation worthy of its source material.

I mean, after reading a lot of the reviews on here I almost didn't want to watch the movie. I thought it was great. The story line kind of dragged out a bit but it all came together. The movie is about a young writer who meets a carefree friend. Getting around from city to city together with life stories to share along the way. I will say I didn't believe the end would have been that way. I hoped he missed the concert and went with his good old friend dean. Anyway, due to the fact the book was different I feel the movie got bad reviews. Maybe I just need to read the book before I open my mouth. I feel it's a good movie to watch. There is some sexual scenes, so watcher beware before you think it's a family movie.