The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is an extremely frustrating film to review. It's a film that as I sit here typing, I realize made me more mad than any other film of the 21st century thus far. This may make me sound like I completely hated it. On the contrary, it's so frustrating because I could not quite reach the level of hating it. This is due to the fact that there are two or three incredibly profound moments spread wildly throughout the film that made me think "why can't the whole film be like this?" This is made all the more maddening by the fact that director and star Ben Stiller along with screenwriter Steve Conrad who did the excellent The Weather Man and the grossly overlooked The Promotion are obviously trying as hard as they can to make a great film. From the start---one can even see the strain in Stiller's face to make a truly remarkable film. Unfortunately, the film he has made is anything but.
The film stars Stiller as Walter Mitty, who works in the photo department at Life Magazine. When news breaks that Life Magazine is publishing their last print issue...Walter must track down photographer Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn) to find the cover page for the last issue.
This is a film that insists on doing the same idea over and over again not realizing that its ideas are cool the first couple of times they are shown but wear out quickly after. The main idea of the film is that Walter daydreams and has outrageous fantasies of the woman he works with and pines for (Kristen Wiig) falling madly in love with him or telling off his reprehensible and condescending new boss (Adam Scott.) However, the fantasy sequences can only be interesting for so long. After the second fantasy sequence...those overstay their welcome and just become tedious. Also, Walter sets up an E-Harmony account and consistently receives calls from Todd (Patton Oswalt)...a representative he talks to about issues the site has been giving him. This plot feels so incredibly jammed in to the point that it becomes uninteresting almost immediately. However, the biggest sin that the film commits is that it doesn't present the audience with any stakes or reason to care. Walter's a guy who daydreams a lot and he needs to find this picture to finish off the final print of a magazine---so what? The whole adventure feels like it was for no reason especially considering that there was no guarantee that the magazine was going to end up using THAT picture for the final cover.
I'll admit it---that may have been overly nit picky. However, my point is that this film, which is a remake of a far superior Danny Kaye film from 1947 is really bad. Ben Stiller has proven time and time again to be a very competent director (Reality Bites, The Cable Guy, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) and is obviously an incredible talent in the acting world. I think Stiller is an excellent and charismatic actor and director who can make great films if he just puts his mind to it. I'm hoping that The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty is just a very bad misstep in an otherwise great continuing film career.
(1 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG for some crude comments, language and action violence)
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