Wild is director Jean-Marc Vallees follow-up to last years Dallas Buyers Club. Like that film's focus, Ron Woodruff, Wild's main individual, Cheryl Strayed, is a wonderfully complex and flawed individual who, in 1996, after a string of bad life decisions, decided to embark on a three month long walk along the Pacific Crest Trailer as a means of sobering up. However, while Dallas Buyer's Club was truly life-affirming, Wild never manages to take off the way that it should. This is primarily because Strayed, at least as played by Reese Witherspoon, simply never comes to life in the way that Matthew McConaughey's Woodruff did. One has to admire Witherspoons commitment to the part: gruff, dirty, and tomboyish, Strayed is the anti-Elle Woods in every imaginable way. But while she nails the more aesthetical aspects of the role, for some reason Witherspoon never manages to get any deeper with the character; her performance is showy and appropriately blunt, but almost never does it become something that's truly engaging. This is disappointing, because Witherspoon is an actress who is fully capable of embodying well-known cultural figures, as evidenced by her Oscar-winning turn as June Carter in Walk The Line. After a string of lackluster parts in the likes of This Means War, Devils Knot, How Do You Know, and Water For Elephants, theres no reason that Wild couldnt have been just as much of a comeback-film for Witherspoon as Dallas Buyers Club was for McConaughey. Sadly, neither movie nor star prove up to the challenge.
