I never read the book. What’s funny is my brother was just assigned Into the Wild for school and I was planning on borrowing his book when he was finished but I went to see the movie before I ever did.
Overall, it pretty much met expectations. Emile Hirsch was fantastic. He actually really reminded me a lot of Leonardo DiCaprio in physical resemblance, in speech, and in acting ability. But some of the supporting characters, particularly the “big name” ones felt miscast or irrelevant. I really don’t like Jena Malone (the sister). I haven’t since she was in Donnie Darko. And my loathing for her increased with Life as a House and Saved!. I don’t know why and I can’t really explain it, but something about her just pisses me off. It’s a personal bias so I can’t really fault the film for it, but every time she had a voiceover segment I wanted to scream a little bit. Worse though is Vince Vaughan. He totally ruined that segment of the movie. In fact, his character could have been completely cut out and the movie would have been even better for it. He was just plain awful with all of his funny guy tics trying to play farmer guy.
Little qualms aside, the story is sad and sweet and romantic. I wanted to reject upper middle class suburban comfort and join the hippies in Arizona and, at the same time, yell at him for his sheer naivete and smack him upside the head for being stupid enough to die 20 miles away from a highway. And the movie was open minded enough about Chris McCandless that you could feel both hero worship and contempt for him.