Penn takes tedium, predictability, cheese, and rhetoric to new heights

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2011)

Having read many excellent negative reviews of this movie, I figured I should try to come up with a positive one. While I hated the movie myself, I can honestly highly recommend "Into the Wild" to certain people under certain conditions.
"Into the Wild" would make an excellent teaching tool for film professors to show their students what not to do when making a film. It turns out to be a pretty comprehensive survey. The egregious overuse of alternative camera techniques is a good cautionary tale. Folks who want to see some nostalgic camera angles that haven't been used since the original "Batman" series might be particularly pleased. Also, since there is at least 60 minutes of unnecessary footage left in the film by the editors, you could use this as an opportunity to have students edit the movie themselves.
There are endless opportunities for party games you could invent around this movie. Have your party guests take a drink every time there's a cheesy camera shot or redundant voice-over or caption. You can also play "mute the film and guess the dialogue." Whoever comes closest to the actual dialogue wins, and whoever can't predict what is being said at all gets thrown out of the party.
Other reviewers have already mentioned the movie's potential as a sleep aid. I don't know if I would go that far, but I think "Into the Wild" would make a great background to working out. There is something about watching a movie make the same point over and over for over 2 hours, to bad music, that reminds me of the rigors of exercise. Repetition, pain, fatigue, and ultimately relief that it's over.