At the Moviesby WCS ’11

On the Road…Again?
Harold Perelman

As award season approaches, expect a new crop of Oscar bait to roll into your local cinemá. Aside from the usual foreign flicks and Holocaust weepies – Schindler, party of 6 million? - the top contenders are usually celluloid versions of books you were supposed to read for your high school Lit class. The latest offering from director Brian Levant (Jingle all the Way, Problem Child II) falls squarely into this last category, and proves just how controversial, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding film adaptations can be.

It took fifty-five years for Hollywood to adapt Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Though Frank Coppola and Gus Sant were once rumored to be attached to the project, studios balked at financing such arty fare. Things came together when Levant, fresh off the box-office success of The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, secured a green light for the film and changed the title to the more existentially provocative Are We There Yet? Levant made another bold choice when casting the lead role, choosing Ice Cube of the rap ensemble [African-Americans] With Attitude (NWA). Mr. Cube is an unusual choice to play Jack Kerouac, but no more so than nine-year old Ayesha Childress in the role of Allen Ginsberg.

Are We There Yet? has a premise that will be familiar to anyone who knows Kerouac’s novel. A swinging black Lothario must leave his sports-collectable business and drive his girlfriend’s two children across the Pacific Northwest after unspecified engine problems leave her stranded at the Vancouver International Airport. But the superficial plot is less important than the deeper philosophical questions raised, sometimes obliquely, by a talking Willie Mays bobble-head with the voice of Tracy Morgan.

The resulting film is far from perfect. Aside from a single fart-inducing burrito, the movie contains none of Kerouac’s bold drug-related content. Cube’s interaction with the children is realistically tense, but too often devolves into pratfalls. And as the prostitute Lupe, Jay Mohr doesn’t even try to speak with a Mexican accent. Are We There Yet? is not a film one “gets” on the first viewing. References to the films of Antonioni, Godard and Kurosawa are so subtle that they are non-existent. But despite its complexity, Are We There Yet? has moments of sheer emotional power. I’m thinking of the truck-stop bathroom scene, or the montage near the film’s end, which demonstrates the most effective use of a Baja Men song since Levant’s own Snow Dogs (adapted from Jack London’s Call of the Wild).

So is the movie better than the book? It’s different, that’s for sure. Not all fans of On the Road will appreciate this radical interpretation. And there will be some people who think that Are We There Yet? is a step backwards for Mr. Cube after the Friday trilogy. That’s for the Academy to decide. Maybe the most important question is not “which is better?” or even “are we there yet?” but “who are we, and where are we going?”