Movie review: Beyond the mundane in ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’

Director Ben Stiller has taken the concept of a mild-mannered everyman and run with it for an expansive movie that is at turns brave adventurism and trying-hard manifesto of pushing beyond one’s comfort zone. All this from James Thurber's two-and-a-half page 1939 classic.

You may have noticed that Stiller also cast himself in the titular role of Walter Mitty, a negative assets manager (the guy who processes and records photographs from stringers and correspondents) at LIFE Magazine. Walter’s a daydreamer in a literal sense; he frequently zones out and imagines himself in wild adventures, whether it’s saving a dog from a building about to explode or climbing in high-altitude, mainly to impress his office crush Cheryl (Kristen Wiig). When the movie opens, in fact, we find Walter trying to send a virtual wink to her eHarmony dating profile...and failing.  

This movie may, at different parts, show you how to get more out of life or at least give you a glimpse of someone without one—hopefully this will fill you with enough loathing and motivate you to get up and go.

What “Mitty” has got going for it are the visual quirks and very picturesque approach to Walter’s inner “zone out” world. The fact that these scenes eventually translate into reality makes for fine, fascinating material: Walter’s hero, the adventure photographer Sean O’Connell, gestures from one of his pictures out at a Third World country, beckoning Walter to join him, Walter emerges from some snow-covered cliffs to woo Cheryl. These painterly transitions are jarring at first, but you’ll get the hang of it and enjoy the enthusiastic energy of his fantasies.

They’re fairly coherent in the long run, even as they diminish as Walter engages more with the real world and less with his made-up one. Sadly, they never quite follow through to hit that high watermark of transcendental the film’s aiming for.

More about that in a bit. Meantime, the whole magazine is under threat as it’s announced that the last-ever print issue is at hand, and the inevitable transition to digital (take note that the real LIFE Mag folded its print run in 2007) will take some “non-essential” jobs with it. Downsizing, it’s such a pain.  

Now, Walter’s got his own very own hero: the combat and adventure photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn in ultra-grizzled mode), a rock star lensman among rock star lensmen, famed for his commitment to chasing a story no matter the cost. He’s also old school enough that he still shoots in analog rolls.

Here’s where it gets tricky: Sean has sent Walter a package with his latest negatives, with a custom leather wallet for Walter as a gift. Inside said package is a letter addressed to Walter, telling him that the package also contains a special photograph (negative 25) that he says captures the "Quintessence of Life.” Said photo should be given full consideration for the cover of LIFE’s last print issue.

Problem: negative number 25 is missing. With obnoxious and overbearing transition manager Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) breathing down Walter’s neck and threatening the jobs of his co-workers, this is what motivates daydreaming Walter to escapes his anonymous life—tracking down negative 25 from the clues in the roll and embarking on a global journey that turns into the adventure he’s always hankered for.

Stiller has said in interviews that he read Thurber’s story way back in high school and that he was fascinated with making this concept of the daydreamer who saves the day into a modern, exemplary American tale imbued with fresh new shine.   

If you’re looking for tragedy here, plenty of magazine fans and media people will relate wholly to the closure of LIFE Magazine. The fact that it did shutter down in the late noughties makes this one a requiem for an institution and Walter, striving to be dignified and working to complete the last issue’s cover with a bang, one of its honored pallbearers.

If you think about it, the cadence of the movie is like grief: it shuffles like somebody in the grip of mourning who then sees the light, saved from both the sea and despair by a girl and a Bowie song. Kudos to the warm, genuine chemistry between Stiller and Wiig, the beating heart of Walter’s fuel to trek through Greenland and beyond.

Similarly effective is Sean Penn, like a haunting presence through the first half, and then a magnetic figure when he Walter eventually tracks him down. He’s every adventure and combat photographer you’ve ever known or heard of: moody, fearless, mysterious, eccentric, and deeply wise.

Sean himself is a personification of LIFE’s motto: “To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed.” Walter still believes in that motto and, conversely, in Sean’s vision. By following his hero and friend, Walter sets out on his own Fool’s Journey, spectacularly unprepared for the harsh rigors of the open road. All the inevitable awkwardness as desk man meets opprobrium makes it funny.

There’s a perfect scene between Walter and Sean in the Himalayas, when the two behold a rare animal through a viewfinder and Sean whispers: “Beautiful things don’t call attention to themselves.” It’s the kind of scene worth sitting through a movie for.


What it lacks in crucial places is gravitas, and it’s not because it doesn’t strive for it. There are some gorgeous eye candy scenes that posit Walter in situations and environments that take one's breath away. But the short story that inspired the movie was better on paper; you suspect Thurber had a reason for its brevity.

Mitty’s character—an introverted and shy everyman—is mainly at fault for this: he’s just not compelling enough to watch and follow, even if you give him a chance to unspool himself from the drudgery of his rank and file world.

“Mitty” is often hampered by its own momentum, which starts off slow, then accelerates, then, all of a sudden, stops to smell the flowers—interrupted at points by calls from the eHarmony guy (even if it IS comedian Patton Oswalt). Its attempts at peaks and valleys are its own undoing.

This movie IS life-affirming, no doubt, but you’ll need to stay awake to get to the good parts. It can be a challenge, but they may show you how to stop dreaming and start living.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” screens in theaters beginning January 22. — VC, GMA News