Movie Review: Road, Movie

Romanticization takes precedence over analysis and pace in Dev Benegal's exasperating 'Road, Movie'. This is a road movie with a lofty message that too frequently gets lost in its own thematic barrens. Whereas the idea behind it sticks with you, Benegal's movie, wrapped in the balloon of its fanciful rhetoric, just floats off.

As the gorgeous credits roll at the end of 'Road, Movie', you don't feel like you've celebrated a life spent on the road less traveled - you feel like you've just witnessed a slow-motion snooze. Benegal hits the same chords over and over again, creating a numbing repetition that lessens the impact of the film's core. For Abhay Deol, a serious guy with a rebel reputation, it's not hard to see what drew him to this film - he plays a youngster who, high on Tolstoy, gives the finger to civilization, rejects his privileged Hair Oil background, abandons his rich family, and like all those dreamers, hits the road to find freedom. Is he a rugged individualist or just a woefully misguided crazy person? Benegal never bothers to answer that.

En route, the picaresque protagonist reaches the desert, touching hearts as he goes. Benegal tries to fill voids via Deol's encounters with ersatz family along the way. Some of these characters are lightly comic (Satish Kaushik's mechanic), others are delicately poignant (Mohammad Faisal, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Virendra Saxena and Yashpal Sharma). From a tale that is simultaneously long-winded and high-minded, their moments of poignancy are a welcome reprieve. These supporting characters are palpable, as are their emotions, but then it's back to the same hot-airiness as soon when they disappear.

Abhay Deol is fine as the woefully ill-informed and too arrogant for his own good Vishnu, but he ultimately plays such an unsympathetic character that it is hard to feel anything for him. It's not that he's unappealing or even uncharismatic, but in the moments when its just him, the camera and the desert, there's a great big nothing staring back at us. Director Benegal hits too many of his thematic nails on the head, never trusting that his audience is intelligent enough to get his message without all of that bold-facing and underlining. In his zeal for the central character, Benegal very simply misses the obvious: Vishnu is a spoiled brat who has become disillusioned with his family legacy. On the other hand, the film is impossibly gorgeous, as shot by Michel Amathieu - his imagery floods the screen with spectacular moments of pristine beauty and long shots.

Final verdict? 'Road, Movie' is weak where it should be strongest, at the core of its central character. I am overwhelmed by the intensity of theme, and underwhelmed by the sophomoric content thereof, and so I end up in the middle, whelm-neutral.