"PROs: Well-written screenplay by Nick Hornby. Well acted. Provides some insight into the human condition. Interesting travelogue of the Pacific Crest Trail. Economically written. Occasional bits of wisdom quotations. The implication is that by enduring the arduous trail the girl will think her life through and make better choices in the future. But we never get to find out if this is truly the case.
CONs: More F-words than the dictionary, to the inscrutable delight of the director and the producer. Much of the story is consumed by recklessly graphic portrayals of the girl making horrible choices: shooting heroin into her ankles, nonstop promiscuous throwaway sex, drunkedness, etc. This turns a valuable (but slow) human interest story into a scattered series of visual assaults. Thus invoking the classic double curse.
My recommendations would have been: cut the hardcore profanity, be more subtle in the traumatic flashbacks, and speed up the pace of the travelogue, aiming for a PG-13 or even a PG rating.
As it is, the only thing "wild" about "Wild" is the shock smut and the shock language." GENIE SAYS:
OK 6.7
βEngaging story. Sick with profanity. The story is rife with reprehensible self-destructive behavior. There is a massive mismatch between the relatively slow and G-rated wilderness-trek vs. the utterly disgusting full-on hardcore porn flashbacks.β
