"A Walk in the Woods": review

[NB:  spoilers.]

2015's "A Walk in the Woods" was directed by Ken Kwapis ("The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants") and stars Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, and Emma Thompson.  The movie is based on Bill Bryson's 1998 travelogue/memoir A Walk in the Woods, which chronicles a 40-something Bryson's attempt to through-hike the Appalachian Trail in the company of his friend Stephen Katz.  In the movie version of events, Bryson is more a fictional version of himself, given that Robert Redford was almost 80 when he stepped into the role of the on-screen Bryson.  Thompson plays Bryson's worried wife Catherine, an English nurse who has been married to Bryson for decades, accompanying him all over the world (Bryson is a travel writer by trade).

As the story begins, Bryson is noticing the signs that come with getting older:  you attend more and more funerals, and life increasingly becomes a spectator sport.  After one particular funeral, Bryson finds himself walking up to and considering a section of the Appalachian Trail, part of which swings close to his residence in New England.  An idea is born, and Bryson decides to through-hike the AT's nearly 2100-mile length.*  His wife, filled with visions of a horrible death on the trail, tries to dissuade Bryson from what she sees as madness, but when it becomes obvious that Bryson has no intention of giving up, she insists that he not hike alone.  Bryson dutifully phones several contacts, all of whom reject the offer to hike the AT with varying degrees of scorn, but just when Bryson runs out of partner options, his old friend Stephen Katz (Nolte) calls up, gravel-voiced, and asks to tag along.  Bryson says yes, much to Catherine's dismay, for she knows of Katz's rakish reputation and his checkered past.  Katz shows up for the hike, grizzled, frazzled, and bumbling, and he and Bryson say goodbye to Catherine and head out for Georgia, for what will be the ultimate walk in the woods.

The rest of the movie plays out as a series of adventures.  The hilly AT presents challenges in terms of terrain and weather, and the two friends are constantly outdone by younger, more robust hikers who are always passing them.  When some of these hikers offer the older men help, Bryson and Katz's pride flares up, and they politely reject all aid—until one crucial point late in the movie when help is a matter of life and death.  The two men rekindle their friendship, hash out old, simmering conflicts, and eventually come to terms with the rocky past they share.  Along the way, they encounter some interesting characters.

Ultimately, Bryson and Katz give up and go to their respective homes before finishing the whole trail, having done perhaps half of the total distance.  The experience motivates Bryson to write another book, despite his having protested throughout the hike that he had no intention of writing a travelogue.  

I haven't read Bryson's book, but I'm interested to do so now.  Wikipedia's entry about the book makes me think that Bryson's insights from the trail might, in many ways, dovetail with my own distance-walking revelations.  That said, I'd file this movie under the "cute old people doing cute things" subgenre.  The movie is predictable and not particularly deep.  The language is often salty (mainly thanks to Nolte's character), but the movie's humor also relies on a lot of awkward physical comedy that neither Nolte nor Redford can pull off with much finesse.  The two lead actors play well off each other, but the script makes their dialogue far, far too quippy and unrealistic.  (I've heard some people question the veracity of Bryson's book as well; the man may have used his flair for language to embellish aspects of his experience.)  One obnoxious character named Mary Ellen—a snotty, know-it-all hiker who disparages the two men's lack of experience in a tone-deaf manner—takes up far too much time, and her presence, which is meant to be humorous, isn't particularly funny.  The movie is at its best when the script drops the humor in favor of meaningful dialogue that explores the nature of Bryson and Katz's friendship.  In those moments, there are hints of depth, but only hints.  On the bright side, the cinematography does justice to certain parts of the Appalachian Trail, so the film's overall look is quite lush and beautiful.

I've reviewed the long-hike movie "Wild" (see here), which also came out in 2015.  That movie and 2010's "The Way," starring Martin Sheen (yet to be reviewed, strangely; I'm not sure why I haven't written this one up yet), are both deeper and better portrayals of what it's like to go on a long walk and to come away enriched by the experience.  I'd like to recommend "A Walk in the Woods," but I can do so only hesitantly.  It's a cute movie starring two likable actors, but in the end, it's little more than cinematic cotton candy:  there and gone.

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*A scene early in the movie shows a sign that says, "Springer Mountain, GA:  1,760 miles; Mount Katahdin, ME:  308 miles."  This adds up to 2,068 miles, i.e., nearly 2,100 miles.  If you Google the length of the AT, however, you're told that it's 2,190 miles, i.e., nearly 2,200 miles.  So which is it?  For this review, I'm going with what the movie tells me, although I think, at one point, one of the characters quotes a distance that's different from the 2,068-mile figure shown above.  As I've discovered through my own distance-walking, there doesn't seem to be a reliably objective way to measure trail distances.  This throws all sorts of things into doubt for me, such as the size of our galaxy and the distances between stars.  And if you really want to blow your mind, look up "the coastline paradox."