Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly loved the book when it first made commuters cry in 2007, their final line of a no-love-left-behind five star review concentrating on the the flute Man makes for Boy and how McCarthy writes that the music played was either ''a formless music for the age to come" or "perhaps the last music on earth". The critic gushed - in among a host of superlatives - that "the extraordinarily lovely and sad final pages of this masterpiece embrace both terrible possibilities". It's the potent mix of the happy and sad, though mainly the sad. Comparitively, the film is bemoaned as being "like a zombie thriller drowning in tastefully severe art-house gloom" and there are complaints that while McCarthy played off postapocalyptic Hollywood thrillers in the book with "emotions interior and refined", that really hasn't translated.
Winner - Book
Chicago Sun-Times
Another five star review for the book a few years back, The Chicago Sun-Times praised the quiet epic as "primal, violent, achingly poetic and flush with a sense of landscape. The setup may be simple, but the writing throughout is magnificent". Yeah. They liked it. When it came to the film, the legendary Roger Ebert was definitely a fan - it's a four star review - and praised how director John Hillcoat evokes the images and the characters of the source. However, while powerful, Ebert thought the screen version "lacks the same core of emotional feeling". It's another round for written word.
Winner - Book
The Onion
The first book review featured here not to revel in five star glory, the satirical paper's well-thought of arts section claimed the book was "tonally spot-on, moving from one terse passage to the next and continually horrifying readers just when the story seems to be heading to a more hopeful place". But there were reservations, the website claiming the central theme of the relationship between parents and their children was a note McCarthy "hit a little hard", occasionally "completing overselling" it. But the film doesn't fare any better, The Onion lamenting that "as grim as The Road gets, Hillcoat goes a little soft at the wrong time". They even suggest Michael Haneke would have been better as he'd already done harsh apocalpyse with Time Of The Wolf. Which is a bit mean on poor Hillcoat and suggests the reviewer hasn't seen his Proposition. Wimp.
Winner - Book
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USA Today
Back to the five star book reviews then and the following fulsome praise: "Many authors have imagined a post-nuclear world. McCarthy is particularly well-suited to the task because he writes so beautifully and convincingly about violence, despair and men in desperate situations." The nightmare USA of tomorrow then is popular with USA Today. As was the film, the paper calling Hillcoat's version "an honorable adaptation, capturing the essence of the bond between father and son". A win for the film then? Sorry Viggo. "The film is not as resonant as the novel".
Winner - Book
The New York Times
The competition here has completely lost its fizz, with The Road: The Book so far trouncing The Road: The Movie 4-0 in the critical approval stakes. What chance a consolation from The New York Times? No chance. The book review praised The Road's "stunning, savage beauty" that while "offering nothing in the way of escape or comfort" has a "fearless wisdom more indelible than reassurance could ever be". Pretty good then. Five stars. The film meanwhile gets a "pretty good movie" back-handed slap, "disappointing to the extent that it could have been great". This is an apocalypse for Hillcoat's adaptation.
Winner - Book
And the winner is... The Road: The Book