Almost inspirational, but slightly misses though still satisfying

Rating: 6/10 (9 January 2014)

There are moments in this film which will stand out the most. The beginning was interesting and drew you into the story, and the ending was equally heartwarming.
I also thought Ben Stiller's directorial debut showed a lot of maturity. He has an excellent eye for visuals, and often the cinematography was quite stunning.
The romance developing between Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig was well done and she played her part. The cast was good, Stiller's performance was easily his best since Greenberg and a special shout out to Adam Scott famed from Parks and Recreation, plays a horrible boss we've all had at one stage or another.
Furthermore, the story is something which should be inspirational- a quiet middle aged guy with a big imagination in a rut looking for someone special, never achievied anything particularly interesting up to now or travelled. His spacing out moments hinted at opportunities missed in his life previously. Which took an interesting turn of events to convince him to take a wild journey and helped bring back his zest for life and love and conquer the day-dreaming. its a heart warming message.
However, it does miss the mark at times. The 'spacing out' moments at times were decent, but often the special effects were over done and distracted from the purpose of the scene.
His journey started off a little outlandish and by the end became wildly improbable including a shark attack a jaunt up the mountains of Afghanistan and offering Afghani warlords cake.
At times it struggled to wrestle with whether it was a light hearted independent comedy or drama mixed with a big budger. So it settled for something uncomfortably inbetween, which detracted from what could have been powerful moments.
All in all a satisfying film coupled with a nice soundtrack. But also slightly frustrating as it hinted at being a special film but settled for pretty good instead the understated love story was the highlight. I've given this a 6/10 but could also be a 7.