The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Released 12/25/13, now in theaters

Ben Stiller directs and stars in this week's release of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  It's a remake of sorts of the 1947 version of the movie starring Danny Kaye which was itself a loosely based interpretation of the short story by James Thurber.  While the Danny Kaye version was a wacky screwball comedy, Stiller has chosen to take the route of a fantasy adventure (with a sprinkling of comedy).  Remakes of classics are a tricky business and hard to pull off.  Does anyone remember the Vince Vaughn version of Psycho?  If you do, you know what I mean.

Walter Mitty (Stiller) is an unassuming, introverted manager in the Negative Assets Department at Life magazine.  In other words, he manages the magazine's archive of photo negatives.  He has a crush on his co-worker, Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), who he hasn't had the courage to speak to.  In fact, Walter attempting to communicate with her on her EHarmony profile is one of the running jokes of the movie.  Walter also has an unusual characteristic.  He frequently daydreams of fantastic adventures often to his detriment socially. 

Walter and photojournalist, Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), have a great working relationship although the two have never physically met.  He sends Water a negative of the "Quintessence" of Life magazine that Walter believes is in a role of recent negatives he has received from Sean.  News of the "Quintessence" gets around, but, unfortunately, Walter's department has seemingly lost the photo.  This error could also cost him his job as the magazine has been sold to a company who wants to make Life an online only venture.  The overbearing overseer of the takeover who makes a hobby of torturing Walter wants the photo for the magazine's last published issue.  So, Walter sets out on a journey to find Sean using cryptic clues from the other negatives to determine his whereabouts.  Unfortunately, Sean has a penchant for traveling to unusual locations around the world.

While I wished for more comedy, Stiller's version of Walter Mitty is still an entertaining, whimsical adventure story.  Credit to the cinematographer for some great visuals of a shark attack and erupting volcano.   Credit also goes to the make-up artist for funny sequence between Stiller and Wiig that's an ode to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's the funniest part of the film.

However, the film's heart is the transformation of Walter himself from meek to assertive as he completes his journey to find Sean.  The film is also an allegorical representation of old school media print vs. new school online media.  The Life magazine employees are the poor, downtrodden souls who are in danger of losing their jobs from the takeover.  The expeditors of the takeover are played as complete asses throughout which I suppose was necessary for this particular narrative, but it was a bit of an easy out to me to move the story along. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a solid outing from Ben Stiller as he takes the material a little more seriously than I'm used to (from him anyway).  Although I would have liked a more raucous comedy considering what the Danny Kaye version of the story was, I give him credit for not making a take-for-take remake.  Sometimes that tact works and sometimes it doesn't.  This is one instance where it works for me.

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

***1/2 stars


Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.