A Walk In The Woods directed by Ken Kwapis, written by Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman from the book by Bill Bryson, with Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Mary Steen-burgen and Emma Thompson. An Entertainment One release. 104 minutes. Now playing. See listings. Rating: NN
Last fall, Jean-Marc Vallée and Reese Witherspoon brought Wild to the Toronto Film Festival. It turned the story of Cheryl Strayed’s hike along the Pacific Crest Trail into an impressionistic, emotionally powerful work of cinema.
A few months later, Ken Kwapis and Robert Redford pre-miered A Walk In The Woods at Sundance. Their film is everything Wild was not, by which I mean clichéd and formulaic and dull. Wild was about taking risks A Walk In The Woods is about playing it safe.
The contrast is disappointing for a number of reasons, but mostly because A Walk is based on a book by Bill Bryson, a far more interesting writer than this movie would lead us to believe.
Bryson’s book chronicles his attempt to walk the Appa-lachian Trail with his friend Stephen Katz, juggling musings on American history and geography with the author’s more personal inventory of his life and career. Kwa-pis’s movie leaves out almost all of that, settling for a kind of geria-tric buddy comedy about two dangerously unqualified pals who set out on a six-month hike.
Every rueful observation about age, and every side-eye given by Redford and Nolte to the obnoxious youngsters passing them on the trail, is weird-ly designed to reassure baby boomers who’ve been meaning to go on that big life-changing vacation but never got around to it.
Kwapis and Redford are blind to their hero’s pri-vilege. Not only does the film wave off the fact that Bryson can afford to leave his life behind for six months to take this trip, but it also totally ignores the inconvenient reality that Redford is near-ly four decades older than the real Bryson was when he set out on his adventure. A man in his late 70s is simply not believable doing the things Bryson attempted in his early 40s.
Strangely, Nolte seems more credible as the shambling Katz, playing the role as if it was written for a cartoon bear. Maybe that’s how an actor has fun with a project this flat.
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
