NYFF - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a fun, uplifting ride with just enough substance to justify its wish fulfillment. Ben Stiller plays the titular character, a quiet everyguy who regularly loses himself in spectacular fantasies. He's into a woman at work but can't figure out how to talk to her, there are massive layoffs at his job at Life Magazine and the man in charge is a giant douchebag, and he has nothing interesting to put on his Eharmony dating profile. When a coveted negative from a famous photographer that only will communicate with him goes missing, he has to bite the bullet and go out on his own to find the photographer and save his job.

Emotionally, Walter's character arc is pretty predictable, but it's an incredibly fun ride, from the ridiculous fantasy sequences (one in which he and the smarmy executive duke it out in a superpowered fistfight across the city is particularly funny), to the characters he meets while traveling the world on his colleague's tail, to his constant correspondence with an Eharmony tech support staff member. The obvious message is that Walter goes from daydreaming about adventures to actually going on them, breaking out from his role as a meek everyman into something special, but I think the addition of the romantic subplot and Walter's waning job security add a little more heft to it. For one thing, although his love interest, Cheryl, isn't much of a fleshed out character (though magnitudes more so than the interest in About Time), she and Walter first bond over a common interest; she's intrigued by the mystery of the missing negative and actually interested in his work. Her son, Rich, also warms up to Walter because they share an enthusiasm for skateboarding. It's nice to see a character that starts off with reasons for the supporting characters to fall for them; even an average person has some sort of interest or unique talent, though they might not realize it.

Of course, an average person getting to travel halfway around the world in search of the most important item for his company is wish fulfillment at its finest, especially when succeeding means showing up a cartoonishly obnoxious boss. But the film is funny and charming enough that for the most part, it doesn't really matter, and the fact that it's both about living up to your full potential through taking risks and recognizing your previous experiences are more unique than you may give them credit for.

The reviews so far have been pretty polarized; and I think it mostly comes down to whether you're okay with a film that is so unabashedly wish fulfillment. It was also apparently hyped up as an Oscar contender, which it's probably not, but it's a sweet, funny movie that's touching without feeling manipulative. The only solid complaint I have is that the executive played by Adam Scott is pretty over the top in his assholishness, and his beard is ridiculously distracting, but that's a really small quibble.