Wild (2014) Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Keene McRae, Michiel Huisman, W. Earl Brown, Gaby Hoffmann Movie Review

Wild (2014)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Reese Witherspoon in Wild (2014)

Not Wild About Wild

Life went wrong for Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) following her mother's death as her marriage failed, she fell in to doing drugs as well as having meaningless sex with strangers. In search of answers and clarity over who she is the unprepared Cheryl decides to take on the Pacific Crest Trail, a thousand mile hike and learns many a lesson along the way.

"Wild" bored me, I said it, hate me if you must but I can't lie because this movie bored me. Here is a story of a woman who went for a very long walk to try and find herself and whilst we see various things which happened on that walk from friends she made as well as the issues of being unprepared we also get flashbacks to her past. As such we see how Cheryl went off the rails after the death of her mother; we see how she dabbled with drugs and casual sex which caused marriage issues. But none of this is that entertaining, it isn't inspiring and if the walk was some way for Cheryl to find herself or an act of redemption that didn't come across to me. About the only thing which came across is how committed Reese Witherspoon was to the part.

But whilst I am certainly no alone in finding "Wild" boring there are equally some who have found this a powerful and moving story. Yet having looked at these reviews to try and understand what in this movie spoke to them and not me I have come to a conclusion. Those who appear to get the most out of "Wild" are those who have either read Cheryl's Strayed book on which the movie is based or know her story from some other means. And look I am really happy for those who found this a very powerful movie and could connect with Cheryl's character but it didn't work that way for me.

What this all boils down to is "Wild" just didn't speak to me in the way it has spoken to others and sadly found it quite boring rather than inspiring like others have.


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