A Movie Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) lives a meticulous and somewhat dated lifestyle. His apartment has gadgets from a decade ago. He carefully balances his checkbook after each expenditure.  It doesn't take long for us to realize that Walter has one other quirk:  he lives in an imaginary world.  He is also employed in an unfortunate field and unfortunate economic sector.  He's a negative asset manager employed at Life Magazine.  I am not an expert in photography careers, but with digital I suspect that there isn't much need for a negative asset manager.  And we know that print magazines are having a difficult time of it.  

It all comes to a head when Life Magazine is bought out.  In comes Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott) to make the necessary changes.  It is announced that Life Magazine is getting out of the print world and going fully digital.  Preparations are made for the final print edition.  Famed Life photographer Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn) who still loves shooting film sends over a roll of film, claiming to have the shot for the final cover.  Ted presses Walter for the photo.  Unfortunately, the negative is missing.  Walter goes on an adventure, attempting to find the elusive Sean O'Connell.  He finds himself going from Greenland to Iceland to Afghanistan (via Yemen).  (For some reason, I recall someone getting in trouble with TSA in real life for traveling through Yemen so I wonder if that was written into the film as a hidden tribute to that individual).

Can a movie go from blah to fantastic based on the last minute or two of a movie?  Doubtful.  Yes, there is some nice quirkiness to this movie.  Yes, the movie does try to get your empathy going in terms of Walter's mother.  But it didn't work until those last two minutes when it hits you with that wow moment.

One thing that came to my mind while watching this movie:  I've been to Iceland.  I know how windy it is in Iceland.  How could Walter actually ride a bike in that country without getting blown off his bike?  I wonder if the filmmakers made some special wind protective screens when they filmed scenes of Walter riding his bike in Iceland.