Posted By auntie on September 6, 2015

interestingly, the day before i’m to leave on a big hiking vacation, i watched not one but two long-distance hiking movies: Wild and A Walk in the Woods. i‘ve read both books, and based on that, i assumed i would like A Walk in the Woods much more than Wild. guess that’s why you have to watch them, as my reaction to the two movies was the opposite of what i had expected.

first, A Walk in the Woods. as much as i loved the book, i thought the movie was trite and superficial, although the aerial shots of the trail were sublime. i also thought it lacked the humor of the book. as for the acting, robert redford didn’t do anything for me. i never really understood why he wanted to do the hike. and while the history and geology of the trail made for interesting and thoughtful essays in the book, they felt rather off-handedly tacked-on in the movie.

on the other hand, i thought the movie Wild was rich and textured. i didn’t expect to like it, because i found the narrator in the book Wild to be self-indulgent and thoughtless, but reese witherspoon and the nick hornby screenplay made her a much more sympathetic character. and from a hiker’s standpoint, Wild was much more realistic than A Walk in the Woods. in Wild, you really saw suffering, including one extremely cringe-worthy moment at the beginning, whereas nick nolte and robert redford got a little wet and a little cold and fell down a couple times, but you never really got the impression they were ever in any danger or suffered any real hardships, or learned anything about hiking, for that matter.

anyway, that’s your official auntie beak movie review—four stars for Wild, two stars for A Walk in the Woods.

Categories: Misc Stuff, Walks and Hikes
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