A Walk In The Woods

Studio: Broad Green
Directed by Ben Kwapis

Sep 01, 2015 By Austin Trunick Web Exclusive

Feeling cooped up in his old age, travel writer Bill Bryson (Robert Redford) sets out to hike all 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail. It’s a difficult trial that fit men less than half his age would struggle to complete, and his only companion on this journey is an old travel buddy, Stephen Katz (Nick Nolte), from whom he’s been estranged for more than four decades.

A Walk in the Woods is the type of film that seems tailor-made to be viewed on an airplane’s seatback panel during a long-distance flight. Its comedy is agreeable almost to a fault; there are feel-good messages in there about the power of determination, and the two leads have enough friendly chemistry that it’s easy to ignore that most of what they say to each other are repetitive metaphors about finishing the things you start. (They drop enough f-bombs in there to ensure the movie an R rating, but even the old boys’ raunchiest banter feels remarkably tame.) The supporting cast is an assortment of familiar, loveable faces—including Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Nick Offerman, and Kristen Schaal—but not one of their characters is given more than a single note to play during their brief time onscreen.

You’d think that—in a movie set along the Appalachian Trail—you’d be safe to assume there’d be plenty of mountain porn, but save for a scant few scenic panoramas, it’s an opportunity squarely missed. The camera instead frames the two men in tight shots, with trace amounts of indistinguishable trees, rocks, and shrubbery along the borders; why the filmmakers chose to shoot so many lingering takes of the outsides of the two men’s tents—when some of America’s most beautiful wildlife was at their disposal—is a mystery. What’s left is a film that—while easy to digest—is almost completely flavorless.

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