Overview
When it comes to movies, we sometimes use 'Hollywood' as a pejorative. We might employ it to mean schmaltzy, unrealistic, vapid and other similar unpleasantries. But when I say The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the ultimate Hollywood movie, I mean it's the good side of Hollywood, all packaged and wrapped up in time for Christmas.
Funny, optimistic, life-affirming and full of pretty pictures and massive special effects, the film is something of a passion project for Ben Stiller, who directed, produced and stars in it. It's adapted from a 1939 short story by Jamie Thurber that's been reshaped entirely beyond its basic premise.
The film follows a quiet Life magazine staffer as he learns to seize the day. As the head of the negative assets department, Walter is responsible for selecting and processing the works of their world-roving star photographers, chief among them the shamanistic Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn). But Walter has never experienced this wide world for himself, after the blows of life turned him timid.
Instead, he imagines epic adventures for himself — diving into exploding buildings to save a dog, hiking the Arctic and, in a high point of the film, living a backwards Benjamin Button-like life with the woman he loves. That he 'zones out' while engaged in these daydreams does not help his social standing in cutthroat New York.
Life doesn't exist any more, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is set in the dying days of the monthly magazine. Ted Hendricks (a disconcertingly bearded Adam Scott) is brought in to oversee the move from print to online and the accompanying rafts of redundancies, and Walter is firmly in his sights.
Unfortunately, Walter can't find Sean's 'negative 25', which the photographer has described as capturing the "quintessence of life" and which is wanted for the final cover. Given new courage by love — in the form of colleague Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) — he sets off to track down Sean and the missing negative, using the few clues he has. Iceland is his starting point for a very big adventure that sees his latent resourcefulness and cool coming to the surface.
For a mainstream, very feelgood film, it's the weird quirks that make The Secret Life of Walter Mitty loveable. Aside from the interjecting daydream worlds, Walter is shadowed by an over-caring eHarmony customer service representative, Todd (Patton Oswalt), who's determined to help him succeed in love. Their phone chats, coming at inevitably odd times throughout the film, are always funny and welcome.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is really ideal New Year's rather than Boxing Day fodder, egging you into living fully and booking that adventure holiday you've been putting off. There's so much focus on travel as a means to self-realisation, in fact, that it's ultimately to the film's detriment. It's simplistic; skateboarding down the valley of an active volcano might make you a more open person, or it could make you a twat. All outcomes are possible for the intrepid traveller.
But that shouldn't ruin the journey of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It's a charmer with a good heart and a healthy dose of unrealism.
