On the Road: Critic Reviews

What he doesn't give us - and what makes the book work - is Kerouac's bedazzled bohemian swoon. Without it, On the Road is a curiously remote experience, all reason and no rhyme.

It all seems - dare I say it? - of little consequence.

Salles, an intelligent director whose films include "The Motorcycle Diaries," doesn't invest "On the Road" with the wildness it needs for its visual style, narrative approach and leads.

The characters heroically swig from bottles, smoke joints, have sex and become narcissistic, flatulent and boring in a way that isn't entirely intentional.

Walter Salles's warm but strangely staid adaptation of a piece of literature that was never meant to be tamed as cinema.

Against all odds, a surprisingly effective movie.

Another "primitive" postwar antique repurposed for boutique sale.

Salles has made an admirable effort, which - while no roman candle - can be appreciated for its honest ambitions.

It's neither the first nor the best road trip that Mr. Salles has brought to the screen.

This, and a certain lack of what one could call narrative thrust, makes 'On the Road' a strange, diffuse experience, offering occasional glimpses of genuine beauty ...

A pleasant but undistinguished adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel about himself and his Beat friends in the late forties.

Although Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" has been praised as a milestone in American literature, this film version brings into question how much of a story it really offers.

While Kerouac's odyssey lacks conventional narrative or novelistic beats (though it comes with plenty of the other kind), the restlessness of the prose has its own cinematic allure.

In Salles, screenwriter Jose Rivera and company's effort to get the details right, they only get so far. And it's not quite far enough.

It took more than half a century, but Jack Kerouac's autobiographical cult novel of bohemian youth in postwar America has reached the screen in wonderful form.

It's not a wreck of a movie; it's not a sleek race car either. But there's heat to be felt here.

Director Walter Salles' film is fairly faithful to the source material. It's not going to start a movement, though.

Despite the high level of craft here, it's an inadequate substitute for the thrilling, sustaining intelligence of Kerouac's voice.

What's best about the film are its quick jumps from one depravity to the next as jazz rambles on the soundtrack: Youth is a candle to be burned at both ends, with (as it was once said about Bob Dylan) a blowtorch in the middle.

The film is a handsomely photographed and competently cast work that does justice to Kerouac's concept of "the purity of the road." Yet there's still something maddeningly lacking about it.

a respectful, tuned-in approach

Sorry, On the Road just doesn't travel well.

On the Road is not a great movie, but it's a pretty interesting work of literary criticism.

While the film's dramatic impact is variable, visually and aurally it is a constant pleasure.

In the end, ''On the Road'' remains paved over.