I think it’s time we let Ben Stiller go back to the grown-ups table. We forgave Ben Affleck. I think it’s time for Stiller, too. C’mon. Yes, he’s hurt us all. But this isn’t Adam Sandler — he didn’t intend to hurt us. Sure, he Focked us but good, and we’ve punished him for his crimes. Hear me out – he’s directed three films this century: Zoolander, Tropic Thunder and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and all of them have merit. No, I can’t promise he won’t stop seeing Owen Wilson or Vince Vaughn. But I can promise that when he does, the project has a real chance at quality.
Walter Mitty (Stiller) is a dreamer. So into dreaming, in fact, that he often zones out on the spot. It’s not the most attractive of traits. Nor is it useful – he’s late to work on the morning we meet him because in his mind there’s an action movie where he’s the star. Meanwhile, on planet Earth, his train leaves without him. Mitty is a classic sad sack – few friends, unsatisfying life, a job of seclusion; his symbolic title of “Negative Asset Manager” for Life Magazine refers to physical film slides, not money, and has him in a constant dark-room type setting.
Two major factors play into Walter’s scene. One, his job is going away. Life, as he knows it, is ending – oooh, that’s deep, huh? Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) is the consolidation bully and personification of Walter’s work troubles. This Ted a dick, not a Stork. No two ways around it. Two, he’s smitten with the new office girl, Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), but his attempts to seal the deal are painful. He can’t even “wink” at her properly on a dating site. It’s hard to say which is most pathetic of the arrangements of interaction here: the belief that a wink is his in, the fact that he can’t work the site properly or the fact that even he sees he has nothing to offer. The dating site rep, Todd (Patton Oswalt), prods Walter to get some profile action going. “Have you been anywhere?” “Phoenix.” Yeah, that’s not getting it done. Walter’s 
biggest hurdle is, of course, himself. His life is empty. His Life is a Negative Asset being Managed. Fate helps out when Walter is forced to hunt down the negative for the final Life cover, starting in Greenland. And a funny thing happens – the more Walter starts to live, really live, the less he needs to daydream. And suddenly the man of no history has a week of jumping on and off helicopters and skateboarding away from a volcano eruption. Maybe Walter has something to offer after all.
I think history is going to be kinder to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty than the present. There’s some quality humor and fabulous cinematography in this film, and the theme is worth the watching by itself. It’s a very simple message, but one that resonates: if you want to be somebody else, stop dreaming and be somebody else; if you want to get the girl, for Clooney sake, have something to offer besides a gawk. I think we all get that.
♪Now here you go again
You say you want the woman
Well who am I bust your dream
It’s only right that you should
Stand there like a statue
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your new boss
Of your coworkers,
Of the conductor,
Of the vendors,
Of the drunkkaraokedude,
Of that Icelander,
You can’t understand-er,
Of the site op,
Of your sister,
And your mother,
In the Stiller-ness of imagining,
What you could have,
Or maybe not,
What you could have,
Or maybe not♫
Rated PG, 114 Minutes
D: Ben Stiller
W: Steve Conrad
Genre: Dream reality
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Introverts
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Literary critics
♪Parody inspired by “Dreams”
