On the Road (Walter Salles, 2012)

5/10
A film adaptation of Kerouac's book has been in development for, like, 15 years. I can't imagine anyone who had been holding their breath that entire time waiting for the result would be too blown away with what Walter Salles put together here. On the Road struck me as an unfilmable book and this would appear to be the evidence of that. None of the manic urgency and pulse of Kerouac's story is here, and you get the feeling that Salles knows he's painted himself into a corner with this move...scenes pass by without any real conviction or importance attached to them. Major events in the book (Sal's stay at the farm, the sojourn with Burroughs, Mexico) come and go almost as brief vignettes that appear only in the movie because, hey, they were in the book and we had to film them.
Another strange thing is how rarely it felt like the movie was taking place in the late 40's/early 50's. Rather, I was very aware that I was watching a 2012 movie.
As far as the ensemble cast, I felt Garrett Hedlund (Dean) and Kristen Stewart (Marylou) were solid, but didn't really like Sam Riley as Sal and his forced "Kerouac voice". Viggo Mortensen made the best of what he had to work with and Kirsten Dunst felt horribly out of place.
On the whole, this just felt like a movie that didn't need to exist, illuminating nothing from its source material and failing to entertain in addition to that.