A lot of waste here

Rating: 3/10 (2 December 2007)

It's pitiful to see a wasted life, one that meets opportunity at several junctures but fails to make (and keep) the best choices. Such is the case of Christopher McCandless - a latter day hippie, explorer, and self-exile born perhaps 25 years too late into a modern style failed marriage. Whereas the source material for this film derives from that family's input, one can only imagine the glossing-over their history is seeing here. I have to expect an extensive cache of psychiatric fodder embodied within the whole lot of them. The R-rating is provoked as bait value by some gratuitous nudity and animal-butchery hardly important to this story. There are some filming locations that might have been exploited more extensively for scenic slendor but the director seemed to miss those chances. He was somewhat superficial in this regard while concentrating more on the current style of macro photography. There is little feel-goodness to this movie as the main character does nothing to instruct us about building success in life from where we come. In his case he could have done so much more with his natural tools and schooling. I guess there are plenty of examples of such depressing experiences around and this is but one choice to film. The acting is good, overall, and some of the characters quite interesting in their own right though, except in the case of Hal Holbrook, placed too briefly to be fully appreciated.