A Walk in the Woods review: Comedy is not fit for purpose

Turning Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods into a mainstream comedy never sounded like a brilliant idea. Funny things rarely happen in that author's deservedly popular books.

His trick is to take everyday annoyances and express them in language that teases out comic absurdities just beneath the surface. Come to think of it, it would be amusing to hear Bryson gently dissecting the unintentionally amusing lunacies from the disappointing film that has eventually come our way.

Upping the age of the characters has turned a bad idea into a terrible one.

The book told how, then still some distance short of 50, Bryson embarked on an attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his old (partly fictionalised) contemporary Stephen Katz. Requiring the two, indifferently fit men to walk some 2,200 miles, the project always seemed a bit of a reach.

It did not, however, come across as the vaulting impossibility it seems here.

Following a decade developing the film, Robert Redford, who will be 80 next summer, has ended up walking the trail alongside a conspicuously out-of-shape Nick Nolte.

Redford is, as it happens, a full five years older than Nolte, but, whereas the Sundance Kid still gleams, Nick looks as if he would require oxygen to ascend an average- sized staircase. (I apologise if he’s actually fitter than he appears here.)

Redford has, of course, past form in the art of buddy-buddy banter. But, without a satisfactorily energetic partner to bounce off (he originally wanted Paul Newman for Katz), his version of Bryson comes across as angry, intolerant and pompous. Meanwhile, Nolte only achieves one half of the “charming rogue” identity.

We know these are men from another era. We know they are imperfect. Katz’s unending talk about all the breasts he’s fondled remains, nonetheless, more than a little jarring to contemporary ears.

The veteran cinematographer John Bailey gets to shoot some lovely trees. Emma Thompson (ah, Hollywood) looks relaxed playing wife to a man over two decades her senior.

But this remains a weirdly misconceived journey.