“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a family friendly movie about dreaming big, acting spontaneous and being adventurous. That it has a patterned, scientific, literal mindedness to its approach is part of this perfectly coifed film’s problem. Ben Stiller has made a film where the magic and the life lessons are all paint by numbers.
Walter Mitty (Stiller) as described here and in James Thurber’s famous short story from 1939 is a daydreamer, constantly getting lost in the clouds with fantasies of rescuing puppies in a burning building for the girl of his dreams (Kirsten Wiig) or having an epic, super power driven fight with his boss (Adam Scott).
But his real life involves processing film prints for the dying Life magazine, and he finds himself unable to think of anything he’s done notable or interesting as he fills out an online dating profile. When the prized photo intended for the cover goes missing, he sets off on a quest to track down its elusive photographer (Sean Penn).
Thurber’s short story has a wonderful sense of imagery and imagination. It uses expressions like “la-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa” to illustrate a chugging engine or nonsense words to describe grim sounding ailments and maladies. It’s fun, memorable and humorous thanks to how odd it all seems.
Stiller’s film however is built on familiar shapes and colors inside postcard images. It’s what people think of when they call a movie a “travelogue,” bounding around to different worldly hot spots and letting the camera sit and ogle. But even the city life doldrums are photographed with symmetrical lines and an odd focus on product placement like Papa Johns, Cinnabon or Heineken.
The film’s dream sequences are its calling card set pieces. Stiller blends them seamlessly with sharp comic timing and even employs some smart deep focus shots, like one of him performing skateboarding tricks, to introduce some elegant simplicity to this otherwise big film.
But even these seem to fall alongside a dividing line between superhero Walter and boring Walter. In his dreams Walter has no limits, and as soon as he decides to live his life he snaps a finger and develops the five o’clock shadow, movie star good looks and physical capability necessary to longboard down an Icelandic road, punch a shark in the face and traverse the Himalayas. His growth and dreams are not so much realized as they are bestowed.
Each of these set pieces is only made profound by their use of Arcade Fire and David Bowie songs. They’re enlightening, but manufactured. It’s so produced that the writing is quite literally on the wall throughout the film, with Hallmark quotations peppering airport terminals and runways. How convenient is it that Walter is working during “The End of Life” magazine or that the key to “Life’s mystery” was really in his back pocket the whole time?
All movies are contrived constructs to some extent, and there are certainly ones less ambitious than this, but “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” has nothing secret and unexpected about it.
2 ½ stars