Just got back from seeing the flick with my wife, and we agreed Hollywood has bungled another fine book. The cinematography was great, the casting good, but many of the things that made the book so wonderful were either glossed over or missing completely. The humor is all contained in the trailer - nothing really new in the movie.
At the point where we were introduced to Grizzlies roaming Virginia's Shenandoah (or maybe it was the Smokies - the progression was very unclear), I was tempted to get up and call it a night . . .
Without Bryson's book as a reference point, probably not a bad movie overall, as movies go nowadays. Just not the pop to the storylines that the book contained. I suspect that the huge increase in traffic that the PCT and JMT saw this summer with the Wild effect will be duplicated on the AT next year due to this flick. And that's a shame. The AT is uber-busy as it is and cannot handle a significant increase in traffic - especially more clueless, wanna-be-Redford traffic - without something giving.
