“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is the story of a guy who never goes anywhere or does anything. Until he goes everywhere and does everything, but he might as well have stayed home.
And I wished he had, because then the filmmakers wouldn’t have pretended that they had a movie. This meaningless excuse for special-effects spending is like watching a wheezing arthritic horse dragging a tractor-trailer full of big-budget digital equipment.
Mitty, who first appeared in a 1939 James Thurber short story, is now a photo editor for Life magazine (which is just about to shut up shop in this movie, telling you how many years it’s been in development) who is longing to talk to a cute co-worker (Kristen Wiig).
The first 20 or 30 minutes repeat the same damp gag again and again: The shy little hobbit imagines he’s this or that dashing hero from the cover of Life, swaggering in to impress Cheryl (Wiig), a soulful single mom who might or might not still be involved with her son’s dad.
None of these “it was just a daydream” scenes do anything to advance the story. The effects are so empty that I half expected Stiller’s arctic explorer dude to present a York Peppermint Patty and command us, “Get the sensation.”
Mitty’s fantasy life never gets tied to his romantic one: He gently strikes up a friendship with Cheryl, and before long the pair are taking walks together.
Nevertheless, the movie (directed by Stiller in what looks like one of his last desperate reaches for artistic importance) begins hinting that there’s more to this schlub than his meager existence would suggest. First hint: He can do skateboard tricks, none of which (oh, the bitter irony) are witnessed by Cheryl.
But why would a middle-aged mom be impressed by a suitor’s ability to manage a skateboard, anyway? The skill seems merely a strange attempt to pander to 12-year-old boys at the multiplex. Hey, kids, come see this pale, laughless little comedy: There’s a skateboarding 48-year-old in it!
On a dim pretext involving a macho photographer (Sean Penn) who is carrying the world’s greatest photo, which Walter needs to track down to put it on the final issue of Life, the little man is soon roaming the world for real adventures like the ones he dreamed of. If you can figure out a plausible reason for Mitty to be bobbing about in the frigid North Atlantic fighting a shark, you’re way ahead of the screenwriter.
What Walter wants — the girl — is back home in New York, and she doesn’t care whether he hiked the Himalayas or dodged a volcano eruption in Iceland. The only obstacle between them has nothing to do with his courage or life experience, but could be cleared up with a single question: “Are you seeing anyone?”
That this movie got made at all demonstrates that Hollywood thinks that if it can design a project so as to yield half a dozen different digital sequences for the trailer, no one will much care about whether they add up to anything. Walter’s fantastic trip to faraway lands of adventure was superfluous, making his movie “The Wizard of Zzzzzz.”