A Walk in the Woods

This warm, witty, woodsy addition to the "mature movie" genre sees Robert Redford as the ageing travel writer Bill Bryson, who takes a trek along the arduous Appalachian Trail on the east coast of America. Citing gruesome headlines of ill-fated hikers, his wife (Emma Thompson) forbids him to go, until his libidinous old pal Katz (Nick Nolte) - whose red-faced and crazy hair belies a blunt but no less lively intellect - offers himself as a trail buddy. The story is wry and sharply amusing and although director Ken Kwapis's style is conventional and commercial, he traps lightning in a bottle - that is, the tremendous chemistry between Redford and Nolte. Although the movie suffers from plodding interchanges, and shows a lack of cinematic bravura for some of America's most spectacular scenery, Redford and Nolte are genuinely hilarious together. No Marigold Hotel with pine-cones: this comedy is deeper, funnier, better.