Movie Review: The Road

Hello,

I'm The Road and I'm really, really depressing. So depressing that I'm a bit like a vaccine against depression. I start out so sad and bleak that I've got nowhere to go afterwards. And unlike the book, upon which I'm based, which is tempered with a steady escalation of dread, mid-way through me you'll have cried so much that you've immunized yourself to me.

I'm also a little different from the book in that all the really horrific stuff is removed so that the true scope of the threat faced by the characters is lessened. Unlike the book, I also feature Charlize Theron. This is what separates the art-form of the novel from the art-form of film: Flashbacks involving Monster teaching Aragorn to play piano. Granted, film is a visual and auditory media so it makes sense when one adds these things to help the audience connect with the emotional plight of the characters. However, it raises the question of what does a film adaptation of a novel add to the experience? And let's keep in mind that there's a difference between adapting slam! Bang! Pow! The Bourne Ultimatum into a movie and a novel with little dialogue or action like, for example, The Road.

Overall I have great actors doing an excellent job. I even have a kid in it who manages to avoid being too annoying. I'm beautiful to look at in spite of one scene involving Viggo's ass. Normally Viggo's ass only adds to the beauty of a film but as it's got poo smeared all over it, his bum loses some of its lustre. But only some. Ironically, I gain points in an in that everything and everyone in me is really, really dirty. Convincingly dirty. So there's a kind of beauty in all the dirtiness that many films try for and few achieve.

Overall, if you've read the book and are curious and want to re-live the soul destroying depression all over again, give me a shot. You'll remember what a good book it was. If the idea of reading a 250 page Pulitzer Prize winning novel seems too strenuous, give me a watch and see what an adequately adapted film based on a superior novel looks like. Maybe it will give you a taste for reading. Maybe even reading a good book.

Yours sincerely,
The Road