A Walk in the Woods (2015)

Jack and I loved this wise-cracking, road-trip, buddy picture, with Robert Redford and Nick Nolte hiking the Appalachian Trail. It's based on Bill Bryson's memoir of the same name, but had to be adapted, since Redford and Nolte were in their 70s when this was shot and Bryson and his friend Steven Katz were 44 when they hiked. Paul Newman was supposed to co-star but he died in 2008.

Redford (last blogged for The Old Man & the Gun) and Nolte (most recently in these pages for The Company You Keep, which also starred Redford) are pretty funny as the determined writer Bryson and the out of shape Katz. Women making notable appearances are Emma Thompson (last blogged for The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected (2017) as Bryson's wife, Kristen Schaal (since Sleepwalk with Me, she was in eleven 30 Rock episodes, three of Wilfred, 66 of Last Man on Earth, and more) as a fellow hiker, and Mary Steenburgen (most recently in these pages for Book Club) as the proprietress of a motel along the trail.

Director Ken Kwapis (covered in He's Just Not That Into You) works from the screenplay adapted by Bill Holderman (co-wrote and directed Book Club, which I panned) and Michael Arndt (when I wrote about his work in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I said I wanted to see his latest, A Walk in the Woods). Arndt is credited under the pseudonym Rick Kerb, which wikipedia says he uses for script revisions.

We stayed home for Tuesday movie day and watched this on Amazon Prime, in preparation for seeing author Bryson at an event this weekend. While watching, I complained that I wanted to follow along on a map and I wanted to know how old they were supposed to be. After reading the trivia background for this, I understand why those parts were omitted. Because of the actors' age disparity with the source material, they didn't want to talk about ages. And the filmmakers chose to show McAfee Knob in Virginia (wiki) out of order geographically. Also, some math in the middle determines the year the movie takes place as 2014 (and a character sings a 2013 song, Get Lucky), but something at the end says it's 2005.

McAfee Knob is spectacular, as is the Fontana Dam in North Carolina (wiki), and the photography by John Bailey (of his dozens of credits I appreciated his work in American Gigolo (1980), Ordinary People (1980), Continental Divide (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988), Groundhog Day (1993), As Good As It Gets (1997), The Anniversary Party (2001), The Producers (2005), He's Just Not That Into You, The Way Way Back, and more) is magnificent, both from the air and on the ground. The filmmakers must have had so much fun shooting on location. We certainly enjoyed seeing those locations!

Nathan Larson is credited as composer (as he was on Juliet, Naked) and the band Lord Huron is "featured" for their five songs, all of which are on this spotify playlist, along with two from Larson.

Rotten Tomatoes has certified this rotten, with a critics' average of 46 and audiences' 48%. We thought it was a delightful way to spend a couple of hours on the couch.