Laughably bad

Rating: 1/10 (9 December 2007)

What is wrong with you people? This is a Walt Disneyesque revision of a spoiled kid's misadventure into self-indulgence. It's a shame he died for being righteous and stupid...and that's about it. It's a shame. But not a particularly interesting story, and a ridiculous one for a film filled with swirling helicopter shots and endless musical montages that are supposed to make you think the smirking Mccandless is some kind of modern Siddhartha.
Sean Penn clearly identifies with his subject enough to direct his film with a similar self-indulgence. This should have been a very straight-forward account of one young idealist's cowardice: too afraid to help the society he thought was sick, too afraid too deal with his family with compassion, and ultimately too afraid to kill himself outright: instead he just put himself into a situation that he couldn't survive without rescue...and nobody rescued him.
I wonder about the people who rave about this movie. I'll bet I could make the same kind of film about John Walker Lindh, and they'd eat it up...provided I could get Vedder for the soundtrack.