The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

What we have here is a screenplay that lacks conflict.  The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a very pleasant little movie.  It's about a nice guy named Walter who lacks confidence in himself, hasn't really done anything with his life, and lives vicariously through his daydreams of going on amazing adventures.  I liked Walter.  I liked Ben Stiller's performance of Walter.  I even liked the sweet relationship he slowly builds with the woman at his job (Kristen Wiig).  There's just not a whole lot to this movie other than just being very nice.

The movie is a remake of a 1947 film, which itself was loosely based on a short story.  Maybe that was my problem with the movie, it feels very old fashioned.  There's no real sense of conflict or danger.  And while there is an antagonist in the film for Walter to face off against, he's really just more of a jerk who likes to flick paper clips at the guy when he's daydreaming.  Heck, this movie is so nice, not even the jerk has anything all that bad happen to him in the end.  This is a movie for people who don't care about anything when they go to the movies, other than there's a happy ending, and nothing all that terrible happens during the course of it.  And yet, I did find quite a bit to enjoy at the same time.  As I said before, I liked the characters and the performances.  I also thought the visual look of the film (also done by Stiller, who directed the film) was beautiful, particularly during Walter's elaborate fantasy sequences.  There are even some good actors in supporting roles like Shirley MacLean (as Walter's mother), Sean Penn (as a traveling photographer), and Adam Scott (as the jerk).

I just couldn't get into the story the movie was trying to tell.  Walter, the meek daydreamer, works at Life magazine where he develops photos.  The last print issue of the magazine is looming, and Walter has been given the photo that will serve as the cover for the last issue.  When the photo ends up going missing, Walter must go on an adventure for the first time in his life as he travels to far off places like Greenland, Iceland, and the mountains of Afghanistan in order to track down the photographer who took the picture.  Surprisingly, it's when Walter leaves his safe and ordinary world behind and decides to go on this global adventure that the movie becomes unsure of what to do with itself.  Up to that point, the movie had been a likable sort of romantic comedy, with Walter trying to work up the courage to talk to a woman at work.  I liked the chemistry between Stiller and Wiig during these scenes.  When he leaves everyone behind for his adventures, the movie loses steam, as not much happens.  Yes, we get some beautiful scenery of far-off places, but it ends up working better as a travelogue, rather than an engaging narrative.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty runs for almost two hours, but it could have easily been trimmed to a lean 90 with nothing lost.  There are just too many moments where we're looking at nice scenery or images, and it feels like the movie is spinning its wheels or stalling for time.  The journey Walter takes to track down the photographer doesn't generate much excitement.  I understand that Stiller is aiming for a low key approach to his film, but I think he plays it just a little too laid back.  Given that the movie is so low key, it's strange that the studio is marketing this as a holiday movie for the whole family.  While there's certainly nothing inappropriate, I think young children would be bored by what's up on the screen, or not all that involved in Walter conquering his mid-life crisis.  Older viewers are bound to get more out of this one.

I guess the best way to sum up my reaction would be to say as much as I liked certain moments and performances, it never really builds to a complete whole.  There are also some elements I found needlessly distracting, such as the blatant product placement throughout the film.  The movie manages to work not one, but two, major brands into the plot of the film.  Okay, I can sort of understand how the eHarmony website can fit into the plot, given Walter's search for love, as well as the film's overall theme of technology overtaking the old ways of doing things (which is much better expressed by the theme of the magazine Walter works for going from print to digital).  But then, the movie tries to not only work in a product placement for Papa John's pizza, but also awkwardly ties it into the main character's own past, and having it connected to painful memories of his father who died when Walter was a teenager.  There's a shot of Ben Stiller looking painfully at a Papa John's cup, and we are supposed to get the feeling that it is bringing up memories for him.  But, given the angle of the camera, all I could focus on was the corporate logo printed all over the cup.

At the very least, though it is flawed, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is an ambitious movie in a lot of ways.  It just takes too many wrong turns, and never resonates as much as it should, even though I did agree with a lot of the points the movie was trying to make.  This is a film that I really was ready to embrace.  There's a lot to like here.  I just was ready for it to be over long before it was.

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