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On the Road | 2012 | R | - 9.3.6

Based on the coming-of-age book by Jack Kerouac: a young writer (Sam Riley) and a free-spirit (Garrett Hedlund) and his girlfriend (Kristen Stewart) travel across the country meeting a wide variety of people who impact their lives. Also with Amy Adams, Elisabeth Moss, Danny Morgan, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen and Tom Sturridge. Directed by Walter Salles. [2:04]

SEX/NUDITY 9 - A young man shakes awake a teen girl (we see her wearing a bra), he takes off his clothing (we see his bare chest and back) as the girl invites a second young man into bed (we see him take off his shirt and get into bed where he and the girl kiss passionately while the other young man watches) and the second young man dismisses the other young man, who angrily storms away; we see the girl straddle the young man as they kiss passionately and we then hear sexual moans and see the second young man on top of the teen girl, thrusting actively (we see a portion of the teen girl's bare breast and the scene cuts to the first young man outside the bedroom listening to them moaning sexually).
 A young woman kisses a young man passionately in a camp bed; the young man removes his shirt (his bare chest and back are visible) and the young woman takes off her bra and we see them kissing passionately and having active intercourse, changing positions multiple times; we see the young man thrusting above the young woman as we hear sexual moans, a young boy wakes up and it is implied that he sees the young man and the young woman having intercourse.
 A man tells a young man that he is not attracted to women; a second young man in the room excuses himself and goes into the bathroom as the young man and the man imply that they will be having sex; we hear a man panting and moaning sexually as the second young man leaves the bathroom and we see the young man thrusting on top of the man (his bare chest is visible); the young man then watches the two men have sex and he later tells another young man that he had gotten $20 for sex.
 We see a young man and a teen girl kiss passionately as they lie on a bed together, fully clothed; the girl straddles the young man and they take off their clothes (we see the girl's bare breasts and back) and it is implied that they have sex; they moan sexually and we see them thrusting together until it is implied that they both climax twice.
 Three young men approach a hotel and we hear sexual moaning coming from behind a door; a young man's bare buttocks are shown as he answers the door and he introduces a teen girl lying on the bed (we see her bare breasts) and sex is implied.
 We see a young man's bare chest as he opens a door and a young woman is shown on a bed as three other young men enter the room (previous sex is implied); the young woman holds a blanket over her chest and the first young man kisses her.
 We see two young men and a teen girl in the front seat of a car with the teen girl in between the two young men (they are all nude and we see a portion of the young men's bare chests and the teen girl's breasts); it is implied that the teen girl begins to manually stimulate the two young men and we hear them moaning and panting as an older man driving in the opposite direction looks into the car and swerves. Two young men are shown in a house that is implied to be a bordello; one of the young men is seen having sex with a woman as other scenes are cut in with a young man dancing suggestively with a woman, and gyrating suggestively (shirtless with his bare chest visible) with a young woman wearing a transparent bra (her nipples are seen through the bra).
 A young man runs out of a room fully nude (we see his bare back, chest and buttocks) and picks up another young man, whom he drops on a bed with a topless young woman (we see her bare breasts); the young man pulls off his shirt as the other young man straddles him and the bed breaks causing the young men and young woman (including a young man watching) to laugh. We hear a teen girl open a young man's zipper and oral sex is implied as the young man drives a car (we see two young men in the back seat of the car look uncomfortable). As a teen girl drives a car, we hear her unzip a young man's pants and it is implied that she places her hand on his genitals (no nudity is visible). A teen girl wearing a slip stands in front of a young man and the young man touches the upper inside of the girl's thigh. A teen girl appears to store marijuana in her underwear and a young man instructs the girl to "spread her knees" and she grabs a bag from her crotch (no nudity is visible). We hear the sounds of active sex (panting and moaning) between a woman and a man as two young men are shown outside the room.
 We see a teen girl and young man kissing passionately in the back of a car and we then see the young man hand the teen girl a handful of cloth, saying "underpants." A man kisses a woman on the neck as she lays in bed and we see him touch her neck suggestively. A teen girl and young man dance suggestively in front of a crowd of cheering people and we see the young man and girl wrap their arms around one another and kiss. A woman sits on a man's lap and they kiss. A young man kisses a teen girl. A young man kisses a young woman (his wife) on the cheek. We see a group of young men hug and kiss one another on the cheeks in greeting. A young man and a young woman kiss one another on the cheek in greeting.
 A woman pantomimes oral sex twice, telling a woman that is how she can "please her man"; the woman then shows the other woman, using her hands, how she would have the man lie down and she would perform oral sex on him; a teen girl laughs and tells her that the woman would like to perform oral sex and her husband would enjoy it too. A young man tells another young man, using crude terms, about a night when he had a four-way orgy with two young women and another young man, including describing the young woman taking off her underwear and doing the splits and performing oral sex on a man, a woman and then another man. A young man tells another young man that sex is part of his relationship with another young man. A young man tells another young man that a third young man frequently has sex with his young wife, then with a second young woman in the same night. A young man tells two young men that he shows his genitals to "juvenile delinquents." A man tells two young men that he had been at a "whore house" that had a betting monkey, and that if you would win a dice roll against the monkey, that you could "have a go" (meaning sex) for free. A man asks two young men what it is like to "be with" (meaning sex) a woman of a different race and the man then jokes that he had been with a man of a different race. A young man jokes that a picture is of a big "game of grab a**." A young man reads a newspaper article about public kissing being outlawed. A young man tells another young man that he had married a 16-year-old girl. During a musical performance, we hear a man joking with a woman in the audience saying, "I want to go to bed with you and get up with fleas"; he also jokes that the woman is his "future ex-wife."
 We see a man take off his pants in front of two young men and his bare buttocks are shown as he climbs into a small shed and says he is going to "transport" to a "whorehouse." We see a young boy wearing a diaper (his bare back and chest are visible).

VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - A young man driving a car drives into oncoming traffic as another young man and a man in the car act scared and a female teenager laughs; the driver steers back into the correct lane before causing an accident on a bridge. We see an older man driving a truck get distracted by two young men and a teen girl driving nude as the teen girl performs a sex act on the two young men in the car (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) and swerves off the road.
 A young woman dramatically tells a young man (her husband) to get out of her house, she slams his clothing into a suitcase while we hear a baby crying and the young woman continues to shout at the young man as he walks out of the room. We hear a young woman shouting at a young man over the phone. A teen girl shouts at a young man, telling him to leave her alone. A young man shouts when a boy throws a snowball at his car; the man shouts that he could have wrecked the car if the snowball had broken his windshield. A woman shouts at a man, saying that he had not stopped the car to go to the bathroom.
 A young man has cold chills and struggles to sleep (he is covered in flop sweat), then wakes up covered in sweat and he looks very ill; a second young man tells the other young man that he has dysentery and leaves the ill young man alone.
 We see a young man break into a car, breaking the window and driving away. A group of young men jump around making loud monkey noises as they walk through an alleyway (they jump up on the walls and back down).
 A man offers a young man a handgun, the young man turns it down; we see the man shoot at lined up bottles.
 We see men and women, including a crying young man, at a cemetery and it is implied that his father had died; we hear the man presiding over the funeral say that the man was joining a son in death.
 A man introduces a young man to another young man, explaining that the young man had "stolen about a hundred cars" and had been recently released from reform school. A man tells a young man that as a young boy he had attacked another boy, trying to cut his throat with a knife, and had to be pulled off the boy or he would have killed him; the man then adds that he would like to "still kill" the boy. A young man tells another young man that he had purchased a gun and held it to his head for "fourteen hours" until he was discovered by his wife whom he begs to kill him. A young man tells another young man that he was thinking about killing himself by jumping off a ship's deck in the middle of the ocean. A young man jokes to another young man that a teen girl's husband had threatened to kill the young man if he found him. A man tells two young men and a teen girl a story about a friend whose wife had tried to kill him; the woman was arrested, then released and the man explains that upon her release, she did kill the other man. A young man tells another young man that he and a teen girl (his wife) had gotten into a "big ruckus" and that she called the police on him. A man tells a young man that he had a toe amputated earlier in the morning (we see a bandage around the man's foot); the young man asks if it hurt, the man says that he does not "recommend it." A man's voiceover explains that as a young man he had gotten over a "serious illness" that he would not talk about. A man warns a young man that he cannot smoke in a car, because he has dynamite in the back. A young man narrates reading a poem as we hear the young man read as we see the words describing that the writer would rather die/be tortured/crawl on the ground. A young man tells two young man and a teen girl that he had drank two quarts of heavy cream and then threw up.
 On multiple occasions we see young men and a teen girl shoplifting from various stores.
 We see a man urinating off the back of a truck; the stream of urine is seen coming from the man (no nudity is visible). We see two young men with their backs turned and it is implied that they are urinating as a teen girl watches. A man's crude narration explains that a group of men would have to call for a urine break. A young man tells another young man that there is only feces and urine "at the end of the rainbow."

LANGUAGE 6 - About 12 F-words and its derivatives, 8 sexual references, 13 scatological terms, 15 anatomical terms, 14 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory term for homosexuals, name-calling (fata**, little beast, crazy, Satan, p*** hole, idiot, puritanical old fart, Carlo in Wonderland, dumb little b**, like Helen of Troy with a brain, mad, wise guy, sheep, stupid a**, animal, liar, young punk), 6 religious profanities, 4 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - Three young men and a young woman drink tea that a drug had been dissolved into and we see them acting intoxicated, a teen girl rolls a marijuana cigarette and hands it to a young man and the young man then acts intoxicated, a young man smokes a marijuana cigarette and then compliments the marijuana, three young men tell a young man that they have arrived to "smoke his weed," a young man asks a boy (in broken Spanish) if the boy has marijuana and the boy leads the young man and another young man to a house with marijuana plants where the boy hands the two young men a very large marijuana joint and we see the two young men and a group of boys smoking the large marijuana joint, a young man tells another young man that he and another young man would do "Benzedrine," a young man tells another young man that he is going to "smoke opium," we see a man with a strap around his arm along with needle marks in his arm and the man appears to be unconscious (it is implied that the man had been taking heroin), we see a woman who obviously under the influence of drugs as she dissolves drugs (possibly Benzadrine) into a tea and then drinking it, and a young man reads a poem about doing multiple types of drugs. We see a young man and group of men share a bottle of liquor as they ride in the back of a truck, a man and a young man share a bottle of liquor as the man drives a car, a teen girl drinks a bottle of beer, and young men and young women drink liquor and beer at a party. Men smoke cigarettes throughout the movie, and a man warns a young man that he cannot smoke in a car, because he has dynamite in the back.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Drug abuse, changing plans, road trips, disappointment, old friends, death of a parent, flashbacks, writing, coming of age, sexual encounters.

MESSAGE - Life experiences can change a writer.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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