Surprisingly Blah Remake

Rating: 5/10 (4 May 2014)

The 1947 Walter Mitty film, starring Danny Kaye with an excellent supporting cast, was a Technicolor gem about a man who escaped from his life through fanciful daydreams. This 2013 remake borrows the bare bones of the plot but takes away most of the humor and all of the color, leaving a rather drab, serious midlife crisis movie. The pace is surprisingly slow and the tone mostly somber. There are funny parts here and there. The Benjamin Button parody is the best of all of the fantasy sequences, which isn't saying a lot. A criticism of the original movie was that its daydream sequences went on too long and there were too many of them. That's definitely not the case here. The daydreams are too brief and not interesting enough, with the exception of one or two. Also, there's a curious lack of soundtrack throughout. Perhaps it was just the slow pace that made it stand out more but there were lengthy stretches with no music that just added to the overall blah tone of the film. The movie looks like a rainy day. It's way too serious to be a good comedy and not deep enough to be a good drama.