"Into The Wild" ***1/2 (out of four): The stranger-than-fiction tale of Christopher McCandless springs to life in Sean Penn's meditative film "Into The Wild," a fantastic voyage you won't soon forget.

We've all thought about it at one time or another - skipping town, abandoning our mindless jobs, going to a place where nobody knows us, throwing caution to the wind and heading on a spontaneous adventure through the great outdoors. For many of us, this journey into the wild will never amount to more than a passing fantasy, in the same realm as bonking a celebrity or winning big in the lottery. But for Christopher McCandless, this idea just couldn't be shaken - and so, in the early 1990s, the well-off Emory University grad left home without a peep, changed his name (to Alexander Supertramp, of all things), gave his $24,000 life savings to charity, and spent the next two years on a quest for the Alaskan wilderness.

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