Poor Cheryl Strayed. With the end of her marriage, the death of her mother and after years of reckless, destructive behavior – including rampant promiscuity and heroin use – she made a rash decision. In the summer of 1995, with no experience and driven only by sheer determination, 27-year old Cheryl hiked more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail through California, Oregon and Washington – alone. 17 years later, she wrote the best-selling, Oprah-approved memoir WILD, presenting her hike as an uplifting metaphor for healing and now we have the movie version starring Reese Witherspoon. Cheryl Strayed had experienced much turmoil in her life, and I can understand how making this trek was soul-defining for her, but I found her adventure, or at least the film of it, unremarkable. I like to hike, but watching someone else’s hike, especially if nothing unusual happens (except that they’re remarkably ill-prepared) is not interesting. Cheryl never gets lost nor is she ever (one rattlesnake aside) in any real danger. She falls. Her boots cause her blisters and lost toenails because she brought the wrong size. She carries more than she needs. She runs out of water. She heads into town for supplies. She runs low on money. She is showered with kindness from fellow hikers and occasionally even bathes. She sleeps with a hippy. She gets bigger boots but drops one off a cliff. She finds some beauty, gets into a rhythm, and ponders her past. I found WILD a snooze but my biggest problem with it is that Cheryl isn’t sympathetic or fun to be with or at all pleasant. Strangers along the way are exceedingly generous with her, yet we don’t see her at any point giving back (except of course that dude she shags) and I found it obnoxious that Cheryl had the nerve to write familiar quotes from Emily Dickinson and such on the trail’s sign-in sheets, and then sign her own name as co-author. I don’t see how someone destroying their life and deciding to rebuild it by hiking a trail and enduring the elements deserves the attention this true story is getting. Ms Strayed imposed much of these problems on herself. She cheated repeatedly on a husband who, as portrayed in this film at least, is a sensitive Saint who still loves her and sends care packages ahead to her destinations (she doesn’t need condoms – she brought plenty!). He deserves better. Countless flashbacks show she screwed about every man she met including a few in an alley behind a coffee shop where she waits tables.
Some may find WILD profound and reflective while others will find it a tedious pity party for a self-absorbed, hedonistic woman with the morals of an alley cat. I mostly fall in the latter camp. I suspect women will connect with WILD more than guys (it was based on an Oprah book after all). There are several scenes where Cheryl encounters men on her hike that director Jean-Marc Vallee stages to make the audience think she’s about to be sexually assaulted or worse, yet she’s never harmed. Except for one excellent, if odd scene where she meets a black journalist conducting research for The Hobo Times, WILD is humorless. The only moment played for laughs is an early one where she flops around on her motel room floor, unable to stand because her backpack is too heavy, but that just makes one wonder why she has no trouble maneuvering it on the trail the next day.
I will say some portions of WILD felt genuine, such as the flashbacks with her free spirit mother (a grinning Laura Dern) in the hospital or a memory of her brother shooting their sick horse. Reese Witherspoon is being showered with praise for her work here. It’s one of those performances critics like to describe as ‘bold’ and ‘raw’ which means she’s covered in dirt, wears no makeup, occasionally flashes her breasts, and is reminded several times how stinky she is. Reese is fine and will likely score an Oscar nom, but I saw nothing any number of actresses couldn’t have pulled off just as well. She’s in every scene (seems like every shot!) and I frankly got tired of looking at her unwashed mug. I enjoy movies about redemption; of being lost, then found again, but WILD just didn’t do it for me. Cheryl Strayed embarked on this momentous hike on nothing but a whim and while it may have been cathartic for her, I did not enjoy the journey.
2 of 5 Stars
