The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (U/A)

Director- Ben Stiller | Cast-Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Shirley MacLaine, Adam Scott, Sean Penn

Running Time: 114 Minutes

As imagined by Ben Stiller, Walter Mitty is a man out of step with his time. He has evolved in a modern office drone with an unusually active fantasy life. He is also, in some respects, the opposite of just about every other comic hero in American movies today, including many played by Stiller. And The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Directed by Stiller (Who Takes the Title role), has a dreamy melancholy tone quite different from what you might expect to find in a big-budget Holiday comedy.

In a world dominated overgrown boy-men with runaway kids, Walter suffers from a highly unusual affliction: an excess of maturity. The first thing we see him doing is balancing his chequebook with a ball point pen. Though we might be tempted, at first, suppose that his highly developed sense of responsibility is the result of a compulsive personality, we soon learn that it arises from personal tragedy. as a teenager, Walter lost his father, and ever seen then he has worked to support his mother (Shirley Maclaine) and Sister ( Kathryn Hahn) and to hold onto a sense of security in an uncertain universe. Work place bullies might make fun of him, mocking his nerdy cloths self-effacing manner, but from the start this Walter is, for the audience, a magnet for or sympathy. a sad, decent guy in need of protection and love.

Walter's wild bouts of invention--- He pictures himself leaping through the window of a burning building, tearing through the street of Manhattan on a wild action- movie chase and doing other superhero-type stuff-- Represent some of the adventure he hassacrified of duty an drudgery. Employed in a photography department at Life Magazine, he has a crush on a co-worker named Cheryl (Kristen Wiig, with her natural silliness in check and an adorable habit of crinkling up her nose) and a big problem with the new bosses, a squad bearded, skinny- suited tech jerks led by Adam Scott.

A relic of a analog world, Walter is in danger of being downsized out of a job as the Magazine prepares its final print edition. His desperate efforts to locate a missing negative-- and a mysterious  photographer played by Sean Penn-- lead him on a caper much wilder then anything he had dreamed up. Following cryptic clues (which Cheryl helps him decode), He travels to Iceland, Afghanistan and other far-flung places, and a movie becomes a lavish surreal travelogue, blending digital effects with stunning landscapes montages.

Walter's most notable trait is the one that every one else undervalues or takes for granted: his goodness. Walter is a low-key suitor, and Cheryl is drawn to him for his thoughtfulness and quite sense of humor rather than for the alpha-male derring- do his secretly purposes. in one funny, poignant scene, he executes us series of impressive skateboard moves- Real, not imaginary while her back is turned. But showing off like that would be out of character in any case.

Or may be not entirely. Though it is a celebration of modesty, there is also quite a lot of vanity in The Secret life of Walter Mitty. Stiller (Working from a screen play by Steven Conrad) is not contained to be the he hero of story; He turns Walter into an almost- martyr and a would-be saint, a mystical self-help guru those journey of self-discovery makes him better than anyone else, those of course he is too enlightened to say so.

There is a contradiction here: an ordinary fellow should not have to be quite so special to win or admiration.  And this version of Walter Mitty undermines Some of the democratic whimsy that has made his story such an appealing and durable by his unruly creative powers, a willing prisoner of his appetite for escapism. But now our identification gives way to envy, and he is another one of those enchanted people the rest of us can only dream to becoming.