Nice adventure + fantasy combo

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2014)

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller), a photo negative asset manager for the Life magazine for more than 15 years. In his position, Walter builds a good work relationship with Life's main photographer Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn). But because of the nature of Sean's work, they never actually meet in person. Also, due to the rapid expansion of the digital media, Life is bleeding out printed sales and thus been acquired buy another company that wants to transition totally to the digital format of Life Online.
At the same time, Walter have some personality issue, he is too shy to make a move on his co-worker Cheryl Melhoff. In the transition time, It's decided that the next issue will be Life's last issue. The transition management wishes to honor Sean's request that the final cover uses the Negative Number 25, his so-called "Quintessence of Life", which Walter fail to find on the delivery package.
The story builds up pretty fast for a 1,5 hour movie. The start with Cheryl Melhoff's online dating profile page was a confusing one for a start, but it then picks up later on. This movie has a main catch, Walter often has this moment of "zoned-out" when he suddenly daydreams and retracts to his own wild imaginations. These imaginations are hyperbolic and makes Walter to be some kind of an action hero in his own thoughts. Walter then gets zapped back in to reality often in embarrassing situations.
The movie plays well with visuals. It uses vivid difference in color contrasting in portraying Walter's Life in clear distinction between office moments and out of office moments. Also, as the movie progresses, Walter develops his character to live his adventures and not just enjoys them solely in his daydreams. This transition is pictured well by differentiating the daydreams and the real adventures by using hyperbolas on the daydreams.
These hyperbolas are the only difference to the real adventures because both "action" sequences rolls through seamlessly on the movie.One other thing that can differentiate them is maybe the timing, that is the daydreams are concentrated mainly on the early moments of the movie while the real adventures are concentrated on the later moments.
The twist of the wallet is also nice. It makes me remember one similar twist I read on the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. The difference is that Walter didn't have to travel all the way back to find his real treasure.
Overall, the movie is good. It serves you the journey of Walter's character transformation. Though it is different from the usual Ben Stiller's comedy range, but it still suffice for this one, yet still being not that heavy. a 7.5 of 10 is my score for this flick.