Easily Stiller's Best...

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2013)

Living in Chiang Mai, Thailand doesn't lend itself to seeing a wide variety of English- language films. You hit the 4th floor of one of the big malls and cross your fingers... today, this ritual paid off: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a thoroughly enjoyable experience (wait, wasn't this the guy to subjected me to Zoolander and Starsky & Hutch?). TSLWM is, at the core, about remaining engaged to life. This 2013 Mitty has little in common with it's 66-year namesake (Kaye's garish Technicolor daydreams advanced the plot line, here they're symptomatic of a 42-year old man realization he's lived disconnected to life itself). Kaye carried his daydreams into his conscious world, Stiller just checks out.-- but this isn't wrong here. Stiller's Mitty is forced to come to grips with the fear of entering middle age and having been nowhere and having practically done nothing. His most significant friend is a freelance photographer (Sean Penn) who he's never actually met--- through 16 years of contact through his work cataloging photo negatives for a dying Life Magazine. His leap into the rest of the world is amazing... taking us to parts of the world unknown to Hollywood (I could add that this is easily the best movie ever shot in Iceland)--- and it's great to see something again that leaves you smiling walking out of the theater (weird phenomenon: no one left until the lights came on! The theater was packed full of us foreigners and not one person left--- I've never seen that happen--- this could also be described as the perfect date movie for middle aged people who met on Match.com).