Now, diametrically opposed to the last movie I reviewed for Ruthless is this one, also based on a book. It’s called, you may have guessed it, On the Road, and yes, it was written by someone named Jack Kerouac. It was described as ‘the Bible of the Beat generation.’ The what now? Yeah, I had to look it up too. Apparently, the Beat Generation was a loose literary movement driven by a group of writers who pushed against mainstream American values in the years after World War II and throughout the Cold War. Their work ended up shaping the culture and politics of the era. What started as a small creative circle eventually exploded into a wider youth phenomenon in the 1950s: the so-called Beatniks. So, there. Thank you, internet encyclopedia source.
Our Jacky was one of those, and he wrote this book. It’s great! I read it, and I really liked it, and they made this movie about it as well.
What’s this one about, then? I don’t know, man. Some poor lost soul named Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) is kind of pathetic and can’t really find his place in the world, so he just wanders around 1950s America scribbling little notes about loneliness and stuff. There’s Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) and his chick (Kristen Stewart). They’re also aimlessly crisscrossing the States in those massive ’50s land yachts, which is kinda cool, I guess, if you’re into that sort of thing—which I actually am. They become friends, such good friends at one point the chick gives them both a handjob while the three of them are naked in the front seat, not parked at a Rest Stop, but while rolling, man! So that was kinda the main thing I remembered about this movie.
So, yeah… Anyway… It’s supposed to be about rejecting the usual story rules, or something. Chasing some kind of spiritual quest, and all that. Saying ‘meh’ to money. Saying ‘meh’ to just about anything. So, should you read the book? Most definitely. It’s great, and I loved it. Should you watch this movie? Maybe I really don’t know. Let me put it this way: the chances that your life or the way you think about things in general, and certain subjects specifically, will actually change, in any sort of dramatic, insight-provoking, or otherwise meaningful way, are only very slightly larger than absolute zero. That’s sort of where this movie resides, in this strange and totally random ranking system I have in my head. Kristen Stewart gets naked in it. So, there’s that. But otherwise… Yeah.
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