T his is a generous-spirited and elegantly made, but not entirely persuasive, documentary that wants to open up the legacy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road by making it relevant for younger generations, while still acknowledging how problematic and dated it is. In a way, that self-cancelling, internal contradiction is true to the spirit of the 1957 book itself: a work that alternates between passages of beauty and purple pulp, profound insight and dim-witted idiocy tied to the times in which it was written, especially when it comes to race and women.

Director Ebs Burnough and his starry lineup of interviewees valiantly try to outline those complexities with honesty, and the film is at its best when it homes in on the literary criticism – bringing in articulate readers of the text such as no

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