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A Walk in the Woods



Starring: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, and Emma Thompson
Directed by: Ken Kwapis
Screenplay by: Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman
Based on the book by Bill Bryson

     For those of you who are considering hiking the Appalachian trail, let Robert Redford and Nick Nolte show you how it's done.
     Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) has traveled all over the world.  He's a popular published author in the world of travel as well, with many books under his belt.  He's written about so many different places, but not about his home country, the United States.  It would appear just in the first scene in which he is being interviewed by a local television station that he has not written much about the USA.  So, one day on a walk just outside his house in New Hampshire, he decides he's going to backpack the Appalachian trail, from Georgia to Maine.
     Bryson is not a young man at the time and not in the best shape of his life, making an already difficult trek potentially even harder.  So, he decides to go with someone.  After having bad luck finding someone to go with him, an old friend of his, Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte), who is in worse shape for the trek, decides to go with him.  Together, they will attempt to make one of the longest hikes in the US, spanning over 2000 miles, and taking many months to complete.  Will they make it?
      Just last year, Reese Witherspoon was the star of the film, Wild; a film about a young woman hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.  That was a serious movie, and A Walk in the Woods is less serious of a movie.  There is not a higher level of desire to complete the hike that Bryson and Katz have that Cheryl Strayed has in Wild.  These are simply two friends who are having a good time hanging out while going on an extremely long hike.  Katz is convinced however that Bryson is going to write a book about this crazy adventure once they're done with it, yet Bryson isn't planning to write one about it.  He's just trying to do the hike for the sake of saying he's done it.  Katz is pretty much just along for the ride, and to make sure that Bryson doesn't die on the trail.
      Now for the spoiler, so SPOILER ALERT.
      The movie ends somewhat abruptly.  About halfway through the trail and about two and a half months after their journey began, they suddenly give up.  They've had a major setback after they are caught by a small rockslide that causes them to fall off the trail (uninjured).  But shortly after they are able to get back on the trail, Bryson says to Katz randomly, "do you just want to go home?".  And they get picked up and head back in their separate directions.  It's almost like the movie got too long and the filmmakers decided it needed to be over really quickly.  The problem is not that it ended quickly, but how it ended quickly instead.
       This is not a film that will likely see any award nominations.  It's just a fun and entertaining movie to go see on a Saturday night if you're looking for a light material movie to go see.
       I give A Walk in the Woods a B.

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