Review of A Walk in the Woods (2015) by Shana P — 02 Sep 2015

If you've read the book - lower your expectations. Basically, they turned Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" into a Chevy Chase "Vacation" movie. They made pretty major changes to the book - some of which worked, some just seemed ridiculous. They didn't seem to care at all about facts - there is bear incident (which didn't happen in the book) - with grizzly bears, which don't exist in the Appalachians! And if you know anything about the AT, the comment at the end of the movie about not doing Mt Leconte doesn't make any sense, since a.) it isn't even ON the AT Trail and b.) they showed them hiking in Virginia, meaning they would have hiked right past Leconte on the way there, since it's in Tennessee. Most likely, he meant to say Mt. Katadhin, but someone got lazy and didn't bother to check what the Northern Terminus for the AT was. Bryson has said several times he would still like to hike Katadhin. I am sure most people going to see the movie have no idea about these things, or maybe don't care.

Regardless, the whole movie just seems a bit over the top. I did laugh a lot, but the laughs felt a bit cheap. A lot of the comedy came from Katz constantly using the "F" word - not exactly brilliant writing. The sad part is that this wasn't really needed - the book has enough comedic gems as is and they could have made a great (and still funny) movie without compromising the effort of the original story. They left out a lot of struggles of carrying big heavy packs on your back - central to the idea of thru hiking, including one of my favorite stories in the book - where Bryson realizes that Katz has thrown out most of their food in an effort to lighten his pack weight.

In the end, I left feeling a little disappointed, as I was hoping for a really good "outdoor" movie that would not only make me laugh, but inspire people to get outside more.