Film review: Stars shine in true-life buddy comedy A Walk in the Woods

A Walk in the Woods

Director: Ken Kwapis

Starring: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Kristen Schaal

Three stars

The lure of the wild has recently attracted an interesting batch of solitude seekers: Reese Witherspoon (Wild), Mia Wasikowska (Tracks) and now Robert Redford, twice.

Two years after All Is Lost, Redford has swapped the sea for the woods and wordless isolation for an annoying Nick Nolte. It's not a bad trade.

A Walk in the Woods is a broad and congenial comedy about two aged old friends trying to hike the 2,000-plus miles of the Appalachian Trail, from Georgia to Maine.

The story, based on Bill Bryson’s 1998 memoir, might seem like the kind of hokey comedy trotted out now and then for older moviegoers. It is that, to be sure. But Redford and Nolte are a notch, or two, above the standard stars of such fare.

Redford has been trying to adapt Bryson’s book for 10 years and he’s now older than the author was when he made his trip, along with pal Stephen Katz (Nolte). It makes their endeavour, particularly on the part of the wheezing Nolte, a little incredulous.

Katz, a former alcoholic and proud philanderer, was never an ideal hiking companion – but he was the only one ­Bryson could get to go with him. But Nolte, 74 years old and so croaky he can be hard to understand, is now more convincing as a grizzly bear than a camper.

The germ of the idea for the trip begins when Bryson returns to his New Hampshire home after years of living in the UK and a humbling book tour during which he was met with questions of retirement – likely the same kind Redford has become accustomed to.

Authors, Bryson responds, don’t retire. They either drink themselves to death or blow their brains out. Bryson is instead drawn by a mysterious longing to hike the Appalachian Trail. His concerned wife (Emma Thompson) insists he find a companion. When everyone he can think of turns him down, Katz, with whom Bryson had lost touch, calls him to say he’s game.

Their adventures unfold in episodic encounters and pratfalls. Along the way, they meet an annoying fellow hiker (Kristen Schaal), an attractive innkeeper (Mary Steenburgen) and, inevitably, a bear.

Whereas Wild was about redemption, profundity isn't the aim of Bryson, Katz and A Walk in the Woods. Director Ken Kwapis steers it along a well-trodden but pleasant buddy-comedy path that offers few surprises other than the undiminished appeal of its ambling stars.