The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - 2 smiles

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” directed by and starring Ben Stiller, doesn’t work. By trying to combine fantasy and romance with goofy humor, globetrotting adventure and feel-good inspiration, Stiller has made this movie too much of a mixed bag of clashing tones. Walter Mitty is an introverted guy with an active fantasy life, according to the classic 1939 James Thurber short story. Stiller has re-invented Walter as a shy daydreamer who has never ventured out of his native New York, but is able to shed his timidity and exchange his imagined heroic fantasies for the real thing in record time. And Stiller bypasses Thurber’s satire in favor of earnestness, but part of that blame has to go to Steve Conrad’s script.

Walter, who has a crush on his co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), is a photo editor at Life magazine where he’s bullied by an obnoxious new boss (Adam Scott) and mocked by co-workers. Then Walter loses a photo by world famous photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn), the photo that is to go on the cover of Life’s last issue. Deciding to find Sean, who does not have a cell phone, Walter jumps from a helicopter into the ocean near Greenland, dodges an erupting volcano in Iceland and climbs the Himalayas with ease. He even plays soccer with Sherpas. Yet his journey is surprisingly uninvolving. And for some inexplicable reason, Walter remains a vague character. He’s somewhere between an Everyman and a comic goofball, not enough of either. He’s bland, genial, sporadically funny and long suffering, but rarely engaging. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a stylish and attractive-looking movie. Too bad it’s just so-so.  12/27/13