What an idiot!

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 2009)

This film is a 1...at best. I will never, not ever, get the time back that I wasted watching this dreadful film. I am completely perplexed as to how this movie scored an 8?! I can only assume that no one else saw the film that I saw. Coming from Sean Penn, I should have known it would be filled with left-wing, anti-government bulls#!t. To be frank, the film is nothing more than the bastard love-child of Dead Poets Society and Grizzly Adams...except suckier.
Christoper McCandless was not only a misguided, self-absorbed, self-indulgent youth, he IS the ultimate idiot. There isn't a single quality to admire about him, with the exception of his generous donation to charity. An action, I would suspect this misanthrope made with the sole purpose of pi$$ing his parents off. Simply put, this film is the "whoa as me" tale of a rich, spoiled, young man who was TOO determined to prove that the apple sometimes does fall far from the tree. He is completely undeserving of the accolades or screen time he managed to eek out of Hollywood.
His "quest" for the ultimate human experience cost him his life...and to gain what? I mean, seriously, what it the point of this movie?? It really only leaves questions, for which there are no answers. Most notably, how can anyone...especially someone as educated as he was...thrust himself into the Alaskan wilderness (one of the most remote places on the planet) without doing a little research?? Congratulations Emory, you taught the boy well!!
Seriously, all of you who gave this movie higher than a 3, would you really put yourself in the position that he put himself? Would you not have spent some time in Alaska, maybe worked a job to acclimate yourself to the land? Would you not have gotten a little advice, perhaps taken a guided tour and survival courses? Would you not have learned about weather patterns and considered that after crossing a river before the summer thaw meant that you wouldn't be able to cross it when the snow began to melt??
No, this yahoo simply asks someone to drive him to the end of the road and drop him off on a trail. Smart buddy! The countdown on your life just began. In truth, Chris McCandless committed suicide and Hollywood pathetically glorified it.
Yeah, yeah, I realize he had "books" to help him out. Yet, we find out in the end what good they did him. I guess Tolstoy doesn't offer much in the way of how to preserve a moose. Any rational person would have realized they were in trouble months before this guy. "Hmm...I keep taking notches up on my belt. I am eating every day...nothing but lean protein..but still, I am eating. Yet, I have managed to lose 60 pounds. Gosh, I wonder if something is wrong??"
The only redeeming quality of this film is that it does manage to remind us that Mother Nature will always be there to strike you down when you begin to get a little too righteous for her taste. Or, in this case, she will leave you to die, alone, in the shell of an old school bus, surrounded by the philosophical b.s. that put you there in the first place, wasted away in a pool of your own feces.