The movie follows the adventure of young writer Sal Paradise, free-spirited Dean Moriarty and his girl, Marylou as they head off in search of the world, of other encounters, and of themselves.
While the film revolves around painfully handsome Dean's chaotic existentialism, the women of On the Road, while often discarded by their men, provide essential narrative stability and insight.
Despite the obvious enthusiasm of the screenwriter, the director, and the actors for Kerouac's novel, they get it wrong. Probably nobody can get it right, since the power is in the words, not the story.
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.
A booze-soaked, drug-riddled, sex-filled escapade with no real point about young people casting off whatever yokes chain them and seeing what's out there. It captures the pure exhilaration of freedom for its own sake.
