The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a short story written by James Thurber for The New Yorker in 1939. it’s a wonderful tale of a man and his wife, where the man constantly daydreams about living different, more heroic (and meaningful) lives. Thurber’s Mitty was a popular character, so much that Danny Kaye and Samuel Goldwyn made a screen adaption that was very loosely-based on Thurber’s creation. When I say loosely, I mean really quite off the mark (Thurber was reportedly very unhappy with the results of the film).
Fast forward more than a few decades and Ben Stiller takes a crack at directing/starring as this extraordinary character. His take might be different than the original story, but his film certainly pays homage to the original concept.
The movie begins with Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) trying to connect via eHarmony with a woman he is desperately in love with named Cheryl (Kristen Wiig). Sadly, eHarmony’s website ends up not helping him get connected with her and he is forced to delay making his feelings known to Cheryl. On top of this, his job at LIFE magazine is in jeopardy due to cost cutting maneuvers implemented by a consulting firm led by an enormous d**khead named Ted (Adam Scott). Ted’s job is to help publish the last actual magazine of LIFE and then promptly lay everyone at the magazine off in preparation for LIFE to move to the digital era.
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Everything appears to be heading steadily downwards for LIFE and for Walter and just when things couldn’t get any worse, they do. The last photo from renown photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) that is going to be the cover of the last magazine is lost. Walter’s job was to make sure all photos for LIFE are kept, preserved and made available for the magazine. A lost photo means that Walter didn’t do his job properly. Walter has a choice to make at this point, should he accept his failure and move on with the other drones who are fired from LIFE, or push forward and go on an adventure to recover the lost photo from Sean? Thankfully, he chooses the latter.
From this point on, Walter Mitty goes on an adventure to not only redeem himself, but to find himself so that he can move forward with his life, which seems to be stuck in a metaphorical zone out.
There is something to behold about Stiller’s vision of Walter Mitty. He does a great job with setting up exactly what type of person Walter is in life. He firmly shows how absolutely stuck in place Mitty is when it comes to finding who he is in comparison to who he wants to be. I think his character really reflects a certain point in all our lives where we hit a fork in the road, where we can either become the person we want to become (and imagine ourselves being) or whether we accept our situations in life and just ‘be’. It’s both a beautiful and horrifying place to be in life, and Stiller’s Mitty is believable when he hits this place. When he chooses to move forward instead of staying put, his chance taking is not beyond the reality of most our lives. Simply put, his a relatable character and could be someone you have known for years (or it could be you).
Stiller’s creation of this character and Mitty’s desire to be more than just the status quo cannot be undersold in this film. It’s a strong appeal to the viewers to bloom as individuals and a positive journey that we usually don’t see in a two-hour film these days. Despite the fact that the film is a bit unbalanced between the second and third act, it’s still a wonderfully enlightened journey that is put together from Director Ben Stiller and writer Steve Conrad. It’s also a simple one, as we all knew how this film was going to go from the preview (when is the last time a trailer delivered you the movie it was selling you?).
With that said, let’s talk a bit about the unbalance of this story. You cannot bloom a character from a shut-in to a chance-taker and then pull them back to becoming a shut-in again. You cannot do that and hope for a great story to come out of it. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty almost imploded itself through this, but thankfully pulled it all out in the end. The initial entry point where Mitty goes to chase Sean O’Connell down in Greenland/Iceland only to come up empty is acceptable in the scheme of things. When Mitty gives up his journey and goes back home that stops his character’s momentum. If it weren’t for Adam Scott’s d**khead character Ted, the movie might not have gotten back on track with the second part of Mitty’s journey. Ted gives Mitty motivation to accomplish his task he nearly abandons, though his motivation shouldn’t have gone away because he was already firmly motivated through the original first act’s set up. In other words, there wasn’t a need to bring Walter Mitty back to his original reality after he began his journey; he needed to continue his journey undaunted by his ultimate demise at work. Maybe a demeaning phone call from Ted would have sufficed while he was on the journey, but bringing him back and then sending him back out could have been a grave mistake for this movie.
Thankfully, it wasn’t a grave choice. The adventure got back on track and we didn’t lose a beat with Mitty.
That criticism aside, Stiller and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh made this movie so visually appealing that you will forgive its unbalanced flaws. I’m particularly impressed by the amount of wide shots that they took for this film. I’m not sure I’ve seen so many wide shots in a movie before, but the locations and the storyline really worked well with them. It was almost as if Stiller and Dryburgh wanted to remind everyone of how big the world and life was, and that no one should simply settle short of their dreams. The visuals are inspiring and lend well with the content and message trying to be conveyed by the story and characters.
There’s just so much to like in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and not a lot of imperfection to focus on. This movie did what it promised, took some gigantic chances in visuals and storytelling, and came out delivering what you really thought it would deliver at the end of the day. It’s a great tale and one that will certainly inspire you to make darn sure you’re where you want to be in life and, more importantly, you’re who you want to be in life.
I will add this to my Saturday movie list. That is a list of movies that I could watch over and over again on any given Saturday (The Goonies is on that list). Believe me, it’s a very short list.
Shifting gears a bit, let’s talk the movie delivery system for this review and how good it looked. I was given a GooglePlay code for this review and this was my first experience with GooglePlay. While I can’t say it was as streamlined as an iTunes delivery system might have been, it does offer some interesting ways to access and watch this movie. I like the fact that I could access this film via YouTube. The initial thought of a movie on YouTube sort of depressed me a little, but the HD delivery and the flexibility of watching it on any device that has YouTube is very appealing.
The one big downer to GooglePlay is that they don’t have an offline application that works with Macintosh (my computer of choice; I edit a lot of video on it). It’s mainly an Android driven app (no brainer, Google made the Android OS), which means no iOS or Mac OS compatibility. That means I won’t be watching this on the plane to Las Vegas tomorrow for NAB. That makes me sad.
Anyway, if you can look beyond that then you’ll find a very beautiful, flexible delivery system that really does a great job with HD content. If you do have an Android device then you’re going to be in heaven with GooglePlay, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
