The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | Little White Lies

The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mitty

26 Dec 2013 / Released: 26 Dec 2013

Words by Cormac O'Brien

Directed by Ben Stiller

Starring Ben Stiller, Kathryn Hahn, and Kristen Wiig

Man in maroon jumper and beige trousers standing on rocky outcrop with distant hills in the background.
Man in maroon jumper and beige trousers standing on rocky outcrop with distant hills in the background.
2

Anticipation.

It’s the the Forest Gump, apparently. Not sure that's entirely a good thing.

3

Enjoyment.

Passably entertaining and spectacular, though seldom lands the big emotional sucker punches.

2

In Retrospect.

One of Stiller’s lesser efforts.

Ben Stiller’s lat­est direc­to­r­i­al effort offers the balmy reas­sur­ance of a Hang in There, Kit­ty’ poster.

Tak­ing up the Mit­ty man­tle with only mar­gin­al suc­cess, Ben Stiller’s lat­est direc­to­r­i­al effort opens on a wan, belea­guered fig­ure. He’s soli­tar­i­ly, star­ing at a com­put­er screen, unsuc­cess­ful­ly hit­ting wink’ on an inter­net dat­ing app. It’s a dis­tant amorous action towards a col­league (Kris­ten Wiig) he lacks the con­fi­dence to approach.

An over­all air of down­cast futil­i­ty per­vades Wal­ter Mit­ty (Stiller), a man who is at least mod­er­ate­ly com­pact­ed if not exact­ly crushed by every­day con­cerns. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy sin­gles him out against cold cor­po­rate back­drops, with harsh sym­met­ri­cal set-pieces and a series of long hall­way shots sig­nalling that despite his kooky sis­ter (Kathryn Hahn) and kind­ly dot­ing moth­er (Shirley MacLaine), he’s pro­found­ly, ter­ri­bly alone.

None of this is prob­lem­at­ic until you realise that Stiller nev­er quite mea­sures up to prat­falling japester Dan­ny Kaye whose part-Frank Spencer, part-Cow­ard­ly Lion por­tray­al is the lynch­pin for the 1947 film of the same name. And when not engaged in the hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry fan­tasies John C Thurber’s char­ac­ter made so famous, Stiller makes for a rather lack­lus­tre fig­ure of inspi­ra­tion. He lacks the vigour, spark and innate lik­a­bil­i­ty that Kaye brought to the role. And, dis­ap­point­ing­ly, with the excep­tion of one per­verse­ly odd scene that takes The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton some­where even more curi­ous, these instances of embold­en­ing fan­ta­sy bor­row more from the school of Michael Bay than any­thing seri­ous­ly silly.

A sim­ple love sto­ry, the forth­com­ing clo­sure of Mitty’s place of employ­ment at Life mag­a­zine and a miss­ing pho­to neg­a­tive help con­coct a coher­ent nar­ra­tive. The neg­a­tive is to be the pièce de résis­tance in Life’s final fea­ture and rogue pho­to­jour­nal­ist Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) is nowhere to be found. Under duress from Adam’s Scott’s Tim Hunter (snarky cor­po­rate indif­fer­ence in human form and a douchey beard) Mit­ty final­ly makes a move. Trav­el­ling from Green­land to Ice­land to the Himalayas in search of the oth­er­wise uncon­tactable Sean, he tries to track the tell­tale heart neg­a­tive that could make or break his mag.

The fan­ta­sy sequences work well to quick­ly par­lay gen­tle com­e­dy into dra­ma, then adven­ture and then back again with the movie even­tu­al­ly leav­ing them all behind as Wal­ter final­ly finds his feet and starts to man-up. But the parts are often greater than the movie as a whole and while The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mit­ty is unde­ni­ably full of pret­ty neat stuff (sharks, moun­tains, drunk­en heli­copter rides, unpro­nounce­able vol­ca­noes) and at times is decent­ly enter­tain­ing, it nev­er quite sat­is­fies in one area.

There’s a deri­sive Chick­en Soup for the Soul’ mys­ti­cism spread through­out that might lead the more hard-heart­ed to accu­sa­tions of utter hokum, phoney­ism or just plain old cheesi­ness. Spec­tac­u­lar though slight­ly self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry, the man-against-nature mon­tages replace real sto­ry­telling and it’s nev­er quite as rous­ing, incred­i­ble or inspi­ra­tional as it wants or could be.

With all the easy apho­risms of a Hang in There, Kit­ty’ poster, The Secret Life of Wal­ter Mit­ty has its moments but would do well to take tips from a far supe­ri­or mod­ern fable when Marge Simp­son glances at the afore­men­tioned poster and mus­es You said it, kit­ty.” And upon look­ing more close­ly com­ments, Copy­right 1968. Hmm, deter­mined or not, that cat must be long dead. That’s kind of a downer.”

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