Cult hero or spoiled, selfish brat?

Rating: 3/10 (13 March 2008)

I'm amazed at some of the press I've read about this movie an it's main character. I watched the movie because I thought it was going to be about a guy who takes off to live in the wilds of Alaska. I assumed it would be about his preparation and chock full of information about how he did it. I didn't realize it was a true story until the end. Boy was I let down. The entire movie is about some selfish brat who disappeared without so much as a postcard or phone call to his mother or sister. His animosity towards his father might excuse letting dad know about where he was, but his mom and sister? That's about as self centered as you can get, which leads me to doubt the films integrity concerning the family dynamics and Chris's relationship with his father. Whatever his reasons for doing that to Dad, doing it to the rest of his family is sick.
According to the Wikipedia entry, and a couple other articles I've read online, there is absolutely no evidence that he poisoned himself by eating the wrong plant (as depicted in the film). He starved to death, plain and simple, because he wasn't prepared for what he encountered in Alaska. If the filmmaker manufactured that, then perhaps he manufactured a few other things too. One mile from where he tried to cross the river was a manually operated tram he could have used to cross. If he had explored a little, or bothered to bring a map, he would have known about it. Intead of being a wonderful story about a guy going to Alaska to live off the land, it's a story of a self-centered brat, whose parents gave him everything, so he gave his money to charity and disappears without a trace, tearing his family's hearts out. Oh yeah, he had a pretty cool cross country adventure which I'm sure his family would have loved to hear about.
He should have died in the Colorado river, and saved me about 45 minutes of waiting for him to get to the Alaskan wilderness.
Maybe a younger person, or somebody without children, would find something else in this movie. I tried but couldn't do it.