A Walk in the Woods (Ken Kwapis, 2015)

Bill Bryson's travel books ramble on foot and in words from one place or topic of interest to another, with his omnipresent wry wit and sense of indignation, and adapting them was always going to be a challenge. A Walk in the Woods, where he undertakes to walk the whole 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail accompanied by an old friend, settles for paying lip service to the erudition and giving us a codgers' buddy movie instead, with the two protagonists, the put-upon Bryson and his shambolic, overweight travelling companion Katz, aged some twenty years from the book and then played by actors ten years even older than that, in the form of Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. Unsurprisingly, the veterans make an amiable pair, but the narrator's sharper comic observations about people and asides on topics from biology to history are sorely missed. It's more a nice day out than a journey of any import.

5/10