I have to admit to not being very enthusiastic about seeing Wild, but, all things considered, I thought it was mostly pretty good. This is mainly a one-woman show, presumably released in December to inject Reese Witherspoon into the “Oscar Buzz” that comes around with late year releases. The movie is taken from the book of the same name, by Cheyl Strayed (also one of the screenplay writers) and is a memoir of her similar experiences. The story has no surprises, being the story of Strayed deciding to undertake a solo hike of a thousand miles on a Pacific Coast trail that traverses desert and mountains (and snakes and snow). Unfortunately she has no apparent experience in hiking, and is recovering from the loss of her mother as well as bad history with men and drugs. As you probably can guess the plot centers around her learning to be a hard core backpacker and managing to survive and complete this huge challenge.
She has to toughen up, not give up after 5 miles with a heavy pack, survive weather, rough terrain, inexperience, some sketchy trail denizens (both animal and human), hopefully learn something in the process and remain open to the OK people she meets along the way. Danger and suspicion lurk around every turn and the easiest thing to do is to decide that it’s a stupid idea and quit before she does any more serious harm to herself. As if all this is not enough, she’s also psychologically haunted by the cancer death of her mother, the alcoholic surliness of her absent father, the precarious state of her brother, her broken marriage and her lack of a coherent future.
Do I think the movie has Oscar Buzz? I would say yes for Reese Witherspoon. I’ve never been that fond of her as an actor…she’s just too cute for my taste, but in Wild, she looses most of that and manages to rise to her self-imposed challenge and convey just how difficult and dangerous the trip was. Unfortunately, however, the repeated and incessant flashbacks to her weird and moribund mother (Laura Dern being really excessively lovable and vulnerable) was too much for me. I was also troubled by the casting, what with Witherspoon being nearly 40 in real life (and looking like it) while Dern, her mother, is 47 (also looking her age). Their ages didn’t work for me (a 7 year old mom?). I also thought the movie would have been better if the story of her mother were condensed and played out early in the movie so her hike could be her act of moving on rather than being haunted all the way…and then, suddenly, she comes to the end of the trail and the movie is over. Wild is currently sitting at 91% for critics, 80% for viewers and 7.5 on IMDB, so it looks las though the critics like it better than the audiences. I guess, for tonight, I’m a viewer, not a critic.
