So caught the new Reese Witherspoon movie Wild, based on the real life memoir of Cheryl Stayed who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in the 90s. This movie is getting some pretty great reviews and it’s a good movie, though possibly over-hyped.

My uncertainty is because I seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion on what I thought the book (and therefor movie) was ultimately about. I went into the book thinking it was going to be more like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and there’s a big part of the book that is. But the book is also as much a memoir of who Stayed is and why she decided to take the walk. Long story short, she loses her mother, cheats a bunch of times on her husband, and becomes a heroine fiend… so she needs something to clear her life and that’s the hike. And that’s all marvelous but I started to dislike the her as the book progressed and her backstory got in the way of the more interesting hike, the history of the trail, the people she meets, and the world around her (which is what the travel book, not memoir, A Walk in the Woods was all about).

The movie seems far more interested in her back story and less interested in the hike. We get much less detail on the trail, fewer interesting people on the way, and certain locations – beautiful locations – get minimal coverage (thinking of Crater Lake which is stunning in photos but it gets maybe 10 seconds in the movie). I guess 2 hours of just hiking is too much and there is still, to be fair, plenty of hiking… but the movie is far more interested in the heroine-shootin, husband-cheatin’ version of the story.

Still, it’s well acted even if I just don’t see Reese Witherspoon as a heroin fiend… she still throws everything into the rest of the movie. The way the movie is edited and its use of ambient sound and music cues is all very interesting and clever… kind of an examination of what it’s like to remember and get ideas and songs stuck in your head.

It’s a good film. I’d recommend it. Odds are, you’ll find it more interesting than I did since I brought some baggage into it.

Score: 83