Share This Article:
by 
Return to Silver Screen Central Home page
This movie is A Piece of Cake for Robert Redford
B-Supposedly, Robert Redford acquired the rights to Bill Bryson’s memoir, A Walk in the Woods, a decade ago as a planned re-teaming with Paul Newman that sadly never occurred. A decade later, Redford finally gets to take his walk, actually a hike down the Appalachian Trail, only now his companion is Nick Nolte. Redford, Nolte, and the Trail are as good as ever, but the movie’s script has definitely seen better days.
At the start of A Walk in the Woods, Bryson (Redford) has lost his zest for writing and feels he is just going through the motions. On a whim, he decides to hike the Trail, mostly to prove to himself he still can. His understanding wife (Emma Thompson) insists he take a companion, and the only person who will go is Stephen Katz (Nolte), an estranged buddy from his bachelor days traveling around Europe decades earlier. What Bryson soon learns is that Katz’s life has gone steadily downhill since then.
Unlike last year’s Wild with Reese Witherspoon, A Walk in the Woods conveys little about the experience of long-distance hiking other than an occasional picturesque vista captured by director Ken Kwapis. Instead, the movie consists of Redford’s wry sarcasm and Nolte’s huffing and grumbling. Both are fun to watch (Walk comes close to the star-reading-the-phone-book level at times), and they have an easy-going chemistry together that could easily support another hour of film. The movie’s plot, however, doesn’t support even the existing 100 minutes or so. It consists mostly of comic interludes with angry bears and angrier husbands (when Katz flirts with a woman in a laundromat), followed by the inevitable bonding moment when the duo get into real trouble. Director Kwapis has mostly worked in television, and Walk has the feel of an overlong sitcom episode with two big name stars. Redford and Nolte, for their part, are content to stay within the script and use their enormous charisma and screen presence to improve some fairly routine gags. They may have aged, but their timing and acting skills are as good as ever. A Walk in the Woods is enjoyable solely for the opportunity to see two great actors having some fun onscreen in what nowadays are rare starring roles It’s only when the movie ends, rather abruptly, that we realize that the film should have accomplished more during their time on the trail.
Continue reading on A Walk in the Woods: Mini-review
by 
Recent Comments