The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Review

Let me start this post with a spoiler alert for both the 2013 film version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and the short story it was based on.  If you haven't seen the movie yet, I can understand that.  But if you haven't read the story, shame on you and shame on your teachers.  It is one of my favorite stories of all time, and I loved being able to teach it to my students when I was teaching.

I was really excited to see the Ben Stiller movie version because I love the story so much.  However, I never got around to seeing it in theaters.  I finally caught it on Cinemax this weekend.  For the most part I enjoyed it, but I feel like it deviated majorly from the story.  I realize that the story is not the easiest to transfer to film, but in the story, Walter Mitty daydreams to escape from the monotony of his his life.  Little things he sees triggers wild dreams in which he puts himself in heroic, daring situations.  He is a man who wishes his life had turned out differently.

In the movie, Ben Stiller plays a single guy who daydreams a lot.  He is a guy that people make fun of, who is afraid to talk to women, and who is clearly dissatisfied with his life.  His daydreams make him seem brave and heroic.  Well, at least most of them do.  He imagines saving a dog from a burning building and as a romantic Spanish hiker.  Those fit with short story.  But then he also imagines himself getting in a fight and as a weird Benjamin Button like guy.  Those two daydreams seemed really odd and not much like the type of dreams the character from the story has.  Also, in the story he is married, but he does pine after a girl in the movie.

Then, all of a sudden, he starts doing things that seem out of character.  He starts talking to the girl, he impulsively flies to Greenland, and is apparently an amazing skateboarder.  You keep thinking that some of these things are more daydreams, but it turns out that they're not.  It all seems very out of character, and was fueled by the desire to find a missing photograph.  Now I understand that in a movie the characters need to have some sort of growth and there needs to be a story arc, but this happens so suddenly and drastically that it doesn't seem real.  He hikes through the Himalayas with no prior training for crying out loud!  And the daydreams stopped.

Now don't get me wrong, as a fellow daydreamer, and someone who has always related to Walter Mitty, I appreciate the movie showing a character who breaks through the daydreams and gains confidence to do the things he always dreamed about.  But it just seemed really sudden.  At the end I liked the message of the movie, and I was entertained for the most part, but the charm of the original story seemed to be missing.  Also, I had a feeling all along that the missing photograph was in the wallet that was given to him, so I was frustrated the entire time that he didn't look in there.  But I guess there wouldn't be a movie if he didn't have a missing photograph to try to go after.  All in all, I recommend the movie if you are a fan of the story, and if you're not a fan of the story you should definitely read it because it is one of the best short stories ever written.