A Walk In The Woods

What a disappointment. Redford and Nolte grousing and stomping about in the wild in a Grumpy Old Men: Take A Hike type comedy – what’s not to like? But it’s not good.

With a CV that includes License To Wed, He’s Just Not That Into You and Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, it’s easy to lay the blame at the feet of director Ken Kwapis, but the screenplay he has to work with – Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) adapting Bill Bryson’s book - is far too tame.

Redford plays travel writer Bill Bryson back in New Hampshire with wife Catherine (Thompson) after ten years in England. But Bill has itchy feet again and fancies the two-thousand plus mile trek along the Appalachian Trail. Because of his age and his lack of experience, Catherine insists he bring company… and grizzled old Stephen Katz (Nolte) is the only one who answers the call. When he shows up looking and wheezing like Gollum’s terminally ill uncle, things don’t get off on the right foot. Then it gets worse.

How worse? They are adopted by an obnoxious chatterbox (a usually funny Kristen Schaal), patronised by two fit young men, fall into a river, attacked by bears, get caught in a blizzard, and are chased by a baseball bat-wielding redneck. No one was expecting Into The Wild or even something akin to the recent Reese Witherspoon vehicle Wild, but this is far too lightweight, frothy and silly: think Wild Hogs in the, eh wild. Nick Nolte, horny and wheezy, is asked to bring some weight - he’s a recovering alcoholic with (gasp!) a bottle of whiskey - in his pack but that too has a bland outcome. He and Redford are supposed to be old friends but they act like they’ve just met.

And Redford is a problem. At first it looks awkward because that’s how he perceives Bryson to be but, possibly uncomfortable with the insubstantial material, he just really looks awkward with a flat delivery of lines that sound like are being fed to him off camera. When these dry lines aren’t sucking the air out of everything, the soundtrack, mostly by rock-folk outfit Lord Hurron, dominates everything, linking the episodic situations where the bald dialogue can get stuck into the Theme Segment, Falling Out Segment, Too Old For This Shit Segment, Appreciate What We Got Segment, Friends Again Segment. It’s just all too nice and cosy and easy and forgettable, which is a real shame because there was potential here.

Scenery is nice though.