MPAA Rating: PG for some crude comments, language, and action violence.
Director: Ben Stiller
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty, Kristen Wiig as Cheryl Melhoff, Sean Penn as Sean O'Connell, Shirley MacLaine as Edna Mitty, Kathryn Hahn as Odessa Mitty
Are you a daydreamer? Do you wonder what it would be like to be a hero? Welcome to the club.
Meet Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller): a member of Life magazine's negative development team and a daydreamer who has never done anything noteworthy. When the magazine is bought out, Walter receives a mysterious roll of film from an elusive photographer (Sean Penn) containing the final cover image for Life Magazine. However, the image is missing from the roll. So to make the deadline, Walter must travel the world in search of the photographer and find the missing frame.
Themes
The main message of the film is to stop dreaming and start doing. Several times during the film, Walter zones out into his own world where he imagines himself as a brave hero. But in real life, he doesn't have the courage to do anything that he imagines. In his search for the missing frame, he is forced out of his comfort zone to leap out of a helicopter into the raging ocean, fight off sharks, escape an erupting volcano, and scale a mountain.
Content
Walter's adventures in his mind and his adventure in real life often involve daring feats of bravery. Near the beginning of the movie, Walter imagines himself smashing through the window of a doomed building and evacuating the people just before it explodes. A imaginary comical melee between Walter and his boss smashes out of the office buildings and does severe damage to the cars and area surround it. In real life, Walter is forced to fight off sharks as he awaits rescue from fisherman.
The language in his movie ends up in the middle. There is one exclamation of "s**t." "H**l" and "Kick a**" are used a couple of times. Walter calls his boss a "d**k."
A group of sailors are described as "horny" and eager to visit a strip club. Walter mentions a character from the musical Grease that has a reputation for teenage sex. Having a hard time understanding a man's accent, Walter mistakes the man saying "eruption" for "erection."
Conclusion
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty left me scratching my head. I had a hard time deciding if this film was supposed to be a drama or a comedy. During one pointless and incredibly long sequence that is obviously one of Walter's daydreams, I became slightly annoyed. I began to think, "Okay, we know this is a daydream. Can we go back to reality now?" Much of the humor was very corny and ridiculous. At one point in the film, they make an odd reference to the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and constructed a prolonged and very boring sequence around it. Really? I do, however, give the film high marks for cinematography. The photography of the film was stunning and I could imagine it winning the Oscar. But I struggled to connect with the film and the character. Throughout the film, Walter repeatedly zones out. While I watched the movie, the same thing happened to me.
The main message of the film is to stop dreaming and start doing. Several times during the film, Walter zones out into his own world where he imagines himself as a brave hero. But in real life, he doesn't have the courage to do anything that he imagines. In his search for the missing frame, he is forced out of his comfort zone to leap out of a helicopter into the raging ocean, fight off sharks, escape an erupting volcano, and scale a mountain.
Content
Walter's adventures in his mind and his adventure in real life often involve daring feats of bravery. Near the beginning of the movie, Walter imagines himself smashing through the window of a doomed building and evacuating the people just before it explodes. A imaginary comical melee between Walter and his boss smashes out of the office buildings and does severe damage to the cars and area surround it. In real life, Walter is forced to fight off sharks as he awaits rescue from fisherman.
The language in his movie ends up in the middle. There is one exclamation of "s**t." "H**l" and "Kick a**" are used a couple of times. Walter calls his boss a "d**k."
A group of sailors are described as "horny" and eager to visit a strip club. Walter mentions a character from the musical Grease that has a reputation for teenage sex. Having a hard time understanding a man's accent, Walter mistakes the man saying "eruption" for "erection."
Conclusion
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty left me scratching my head. I had a hard time deciding if this film was supposed to be a drama or a comedy. During one pointless and incredibly long sequence that is obviously one of Walter's daydreams, I became slightly annoyed. I began to think, "Okay, we know this is a daydream. Can we go back to reality now?" Much of the humor was very corny and ridiculous. At one point in the film, they make an odd reference to the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and constructed a prolonged and very boring sequence around it. Really? I do, however, give the film high marks for cinematography. The photography of the film was stunning and I could imagine it winning the Oscar. But I struggled to connect with the film and the character. Throughout the film, Walter repeatedly zones out. While I watched the movie, the same thing happened to me.
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Thanks for your review and while you were honest with your reaction to it, this may be the case for several in the younger generation. The film did move slowly at times but as an adult, I thoroughly enjoyed it and totally laughed at the Benjamin Button reference.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the movie portrayed what they wanted...a regular guy who dreams of doing something important with his life, even if that means working really hard at his job and knowing that other people matter unlike the new boss that comes in and throws people away so quickly.
I truly loved the cinematography as well! So awesome to see the sights played out on the big screen making you feel as if you were right there as well.