MOVIE REVIEW

James Thurber's 1939 short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was adapted as a film for the second time in 2013, starring Ben Stiller as the protagonist Walter Mitty, although the movie's plot is quite different from that of the story. The movie was directed by Ben Stiller himself, and was released last Christmas.
How often do you daydream about things you can't really do? You know, like trash-talking or having a face-off with your boss? The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is basically based on that – the imaginative zoning-outs of the single Walter Mitty, who is a negative assets manager at Life Magazine. He goes to his office on the morning of his 42nd birthday to find that the magazine had been acquired by a larger corporation that has decided to reduce the magazine into just a website, which means that a lot of the staff members would be laid off. As it is, both Walter and his crush Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig) are at danger of losing their jobs.
And that's when the nightmare begins. Walter receives a gift alongside a roll of negatives from Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), with the twenty-fifth being a special one that Sean had requested the owners of the magazine to make the cover of the last ever issue, describing it to be the quintessence of Life. But Walter cannot find that particular negative. Well he can easily contact Sean and ask him about the missing photo, right? Wrong, because Sean doesn't use phone or e-mail, and was out of the country (uh-oh).
Now Cheryl – a crime novel enthusiast – encourages Walter to find the clues from the other photographs as to where Sean could possibly be, and to fly there. Thus begins the adventures of Walter Mitty. He flies to Greenland, has a near death experience at sea, then follows Sean's tracks to Iceland, and runs, bikes, and even skateboards towards his goal. Failing to find Sean, he has to go back to New York, where he soon gets fired by his new boss Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) for not being able to come up with the picture. But he still doesn't give up, and sets off to find Sean, even if that means going to the ends of the world.
As the story unravels, we quickly find that the movie is not solely based on Walter's daydreaming, but is more about his adventures. The frequency of his zone-outs decreases, since he starts living his fantasies. In that sense, the movie's name is not quite justified, as it gives you the impression of his secret life, not the real one. There were some loose ends that remained vague. On another downside, the movie takes a rather pathetic attempt at mocking The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The positives of the film would be its choice of picturesque locations, the soundtracks, the SFX, and the inspirational tagline.
Despite the critics' mixed reviews, the viewers seemed to have liked the movie. With an average of 7.4/10 on IMDb, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty encompasses romance, adventure, comedy and even drama. If you're looking for a good time-pass, you can pick this 125-minute-movie up.