“Wild” is a movie based on a book, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir called “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” about hiking more than 1,000 miles with no prior experience, unless you count walking as a skill. I used to on my resume.
I didn’t read the book, but my wife did and she wanted to see the movie and I was mildly curious. The film stars Reese Witherspoon, the pretty woman from the “Legally Blonde” franchise, and she scruffs up her beauty in that way Hollywood scruffs up beauty (dirty, but still attractive). Oh, and get a load of this–– in the movie, Reese apparently stinks to high heaven as she hikes across America!
We’re talking Oscar catnip, people!
Throughout the journey, there are all sorts of flashbacks in which we see Reese’s miserable life raised by an abusive alcoholic father and a free spirit mother who showers her and her brother with love, laughter and wisdom while you wait.
Reese apparently gets married to some good guy and then her loving mom gets cancer. Mom dies quickly. This makes Reese’s character very sad so she does what you’d expect–– she has lots of sex with many men and smokes heroin, but that high apparently takes too long so she shoots heroin and lives like an animal and somewhere in her descent she decides she’s got to get it together so she buys a ton (literally) of camping equipment and food and begins hiking the PCT.
The movie follows this journey intercutting all the flashbacks of her life and you go along for the hike and honest to God all the while I kept wishing Reese would walk faster to get the damn thing over with.
It’s a slog. I stayed awake through most of it, and I feel like that’s an accomplishment, one I achieved without having to sleep with many strangers or shoot heroin.
Enter this cinematic journey at your own risk. If you do find yourself caught in a theater with this film, at the first signs of boredom take my advice–– walk!