The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Starring Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig
Directed by Ben Stiller
As amusing as Ben Stiller thinks he is skateboarding down an Icelandic country highway with a generic pop song blasting as the soundtrack, its just not that compelling for us.
Such is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a film that meanders and wavers into wacky daydreams, forced melodrama, overwrought soul searching and downright silliness.
Based on the extremely short story by James Thurber, Stiller directs and stars in the title role as a lonely LIFE magazine employee who copes with the aid of elaborate daydreams in which he saves an attractive co-workers dog from a burning building and beats up his megalomaniac boss in an imaginary fight sequence like something out of a Marvel movie.
The problem with these moments is how jarring they are to the overall mood of the film and how artificially they are executed. As a testament to the unstoppable digital age and a commentary on modern print journalism, the magazine is facing cutbacks and Mitty embarks on a bizarre journey around the globe to find a mysterious photo that has gone missing and is needed for the final issue.
This is where things go off the rails even more; we follow Mitty to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan and suddenly his daydreams disappear only to be replaced by cartoonish and one dimensional real world characters.
Sure, a lot of money was spent on location shooting, but, for a movie that boasts the power of dreams, this one comes up exceedingly short on heart and humanity.
