(USA, 114 min.)
Dir. Ben Stiller, Writ. Steve Conrad
Starring: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam
Scott, Kathryn Hahn, Sean Penn
Why do so many films and stories treat travel as a metaphor
for personal growth? It’s an easy symbol, for one, to show a man evolve as he
treks from Point A to Point B. Uncharted terrain, unknown waters, and foreign
lands all present handy metaphors for taking a leap of faith. Ben Stiller’s
adaptation of the short story The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty, though, offers an unfortunate reminder that life can sometimes
be better spent at home. This loud, schmaltzy, and inconsistent film rejoices
in the thrill of escapism, but it’s hardly worth leaving the house to see on
the big screen.
Stiller stars as Walter Mitty both on screen and off as he
plays the lead both in front of the camera and behind it. Walter Mitty is an
average man that escapes his ho-hum existence by zoning out and escaping into
extravagant daydreams full of adventures that he’d never undertake in real
life. Stiller is very likable in his performance as the amiable and relatable
Mitty. Stiller, as a director, takes the imaginative sequences of Walter Mitty
into all sorts of ambitious and extravagant corners of studio tent-pole escapism,
yet they’re mostly obnoxious on-the-nose asides that grow tiresome almost
immediately.
Walter loves to imagine himself in all sorts of crazy
adventures. He chases trains, climbs mountains, and does impossible things
without leaving the little bubble of his imagination. It’s no wonder that
Walter Mitty wants to escape life. The film first introduces him sitting at
home exploring the wonders of online dating as he uses his DellTM
computer to browse E-HarmonyTM and stalk his co-worker, Cheryl (Kristen
Wiig). He’s not the greatest catch for all these single women in search of a
fun and exciting man. The fact is observed by the friendly man on the E-HarmonyTM
customer service line (voiced by Patton Oswalt) in a painfully dead-on-arrival
running gag in which Walter and the disembodied voice evaluate Walter’s
evolution as a man in between plugs for the dating service’s signature algorithms
and great track record for making matches.
Walter makes up for all his stay-at-home shortcomings,
though, when he is trust into an exciting mission that could end with him
saving his career and getting the girl. Walter, the negatives processor for
photographs at Life magazine, faces
an inadvertent blunder when he loses the negative for the image sent by
renowned photojournalist Sean O’Connell, which his douchey employer (Adam
Scott) insists serve as the photo for the cover of the final issue of Life before the magazine downsizes and
moves online. Beckoned by the image of Sean O’Connell and prompted by Cheryl’s
advice, Walter decides to turn his fantasies into real-life adventures.
As Walter follows the clues and tracks Sean’s trail across
the globe, The Secret Life of Walter
Mitty takes the audience on an adventure of picturesque globetrotting. This
travelogue offers striking shots of corners of the globe—Greenland, Iceland,
and Afghanistan—that rarely serve as backdrops for cinematic journeys. Stiller
and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh use the locations to their fullest potential
and let Walter’s trip achieve something grander than the fantasies he could
ever dream up.
Walter’s trip, however, stumbles into cliché upon cliché as
the privileged American betters himself through travel and in turn makes a
mockery out of cultural difference. Language barriers are played for one-note
laughs, while countless sight gags, such as one of a gun-toting’ Taliban soldier
eating Mrs. Mitty’s clementine cake off the end of a rifle, stamp Walter Mitty’s passport with awkward
cringe upon awkward cringe.
The whole feat of the treasure hunt in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, though, seems fairly pointless. The
film contradicts its own logic by the end when Walter finds the elusive
Negative 25 and it turns out to be a poignant photo essay in which O’Connell
reveals that the greatest adventures in life are right in front of you. All of Walter Mitty’s jaunts around the world,
all of his extreme expeditions, are therefore gratuitously grandiose spectacles
that seem to miss the point of the film’s own message. He returns home from his
travels supposedly a better man for seeing the world—the film’s weird flight
with beard imagery also marks Walter a bigger man when he comes back with a
face as hairy as his boss’s—when the morale of his quest says that it is a
person’s ability to find the thrill of adventure in everyday doings that is the
hallmark of living life to the fullest.
There’s a great film to be had in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as Stiller’s best scenes are those
that pull Walter back to earth and hint at the message embodied in Sean’s
missing picture. Take, for example, the long-awaited scene in which Walter
finally meets the famed photographer. Walter finds Sean O’Connell in the
mountains of Afghanistan. Sean, played by Sean Penn in a hilarious bit of
self-referentiality to his star persona as a world traveller, lets Walter
observe with him a snow leopard that he has tasked himself with shooting.
Rather than click away, though, Sean teaches Walter to simply savour the moment
and enjoy the sights of life that are before his very eyes. There’s no need to
frame it or manipulate it, Sean seems to be saying. These moments of
appreciation and introspection seem to afford the most personal growth.
The Secret Life of
Walter Mitty ultimately—and ironically—feels very Mittyesque. The term comes
from the legacy of Walter Mitty’s own
source and describes a man like Walter Mitty who pays little attention to the
real world and instead indulges in self-serving daydreams. Stiller has so many
tools at his disposal—strong chemistry with Kristen Wiig, a great supporting
cast of Shirley MacLaine and Kathryn Hahn, a heartwarming story, etc.—that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty fails to
heed Sean’s good advice. Overblown set pieces and delusions of grandeur, which
add little to the film other than diversion, overwhelm the potentially
heartwarming drama. Stiller spends far more effort in using the fantastical
escapism to show Walter’s growth as a person that one is ultimately left
feeling cold when Walter’s adventure comes full circle and tries to hit home.
Rating: ★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
is now playing in wide release.
