Robert Redford turns 80 next year. It’s an unbelievable statistic for anyone who grew up watching the virile and iconic golden boy in films like “All the President’s Men” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
And he looks every one of those years in “A Walk In the Woods.” Not just in close-ups but in the fish-out-of-water awkwardness that conveys a what-am-I-doing-here kind of weariness. In a he told me he refused to appear in “mindless material.” But times change and so did he.
More suited to the task is his traveling partner gravel-voiced Nick Nolte, the American Depardieu, looking like his 2002 DUI photo and huffing like he has emphysema.
He is not in physical shape to walk the 2,2000 mile Appalachian trail with the estranged friend from his youth. Nor is Redford and neither practice or exercise for the hike by, say, walking around the block.
Redford’s character, based on much younger travel writer and academic Bill Bryson, is in a funk. People he knows are dying and he feels like his life has hit a roadblock.
And so he impulsively and implausibly decides to walk the trail solo, until his wife – played by 56-year old Emma Thompson (Who does he think he is? Woody Allen?) – demands he take a partner.
When everyone he asks turns him down he allows the uninvited Nolte – a recovering alcoholic fleeing a court appearance – to tag along.
A string of pratfalls and sight gags follow.
There are bears, encounters with the opposite sex and other close calls. They fall in a river and down a mountain. Nolte flashes his plumber’s crack and his face flushes with his exertions. Meanwhile, Redford lectures him on the disappearing forest and the glaciers. Who would you rather have a beer with?
This is not the quietly profound and similarly-themed “Wild.”
Director Ken Kwapis, a TV veteran – “The Bernie Mac Show,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” The Office,” “The Larry Sanders Show” – turns in a funny but shallow mismatched buddy film for the “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” crowd. And a lumbering, foul-mouthed, randy and dissolute baggy pants Nolte runs through it.
**1/2 Two and one half
With Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson, Mary Steenburgen, Kristen Schaal. Produced by Chip Diggins, Bill Holderman, Robert Redford. Written by Rick Kerb, Bill Holderman. Directed by Ken Kwapis. Approximate running time: 104 minutes. Rated R; language, sexual references.
Tags: Bill Bryson, Nolte, Redford, Walk in the Woods, Wild Posted by