A visual pleasure with real warmth at the heart of it

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2013)

Ben Stiller makes what feels very much like a labor of love in the delightful "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." This is a visual pleasure that is also quirky and funny with real warmth at the heart of it. Days later, I recall scenes and how well they were executed, realizing that other than an awkward Benjamin Buttons parody (mostly it just doesn't fit), this film really clicks on all levels.
Stiller plays Walter Mitty, a daydreamer who "zones out" somewhat more often than the average person, most likely due to the stagnant nature of his life as a "negative asset manager" for Life magazine, which sounds like a horribly dull way of saying he develops pictures that other people take. He spends his working day in the dark basement of the Life magazine building with only his employee Hector to talk to. Lately his daydreams involve a coworker that he is smitten with, played by Kristin Wiig. But his time at the magazine is running out, as the new owners push to make the transition from print to online, thereby spelling the end of many jobs at Life. Mitty is tasked with producing the last cover photo, a "Negative 25" from a mysterious photographer (Sean Penn) whom Mitty has been handling for years, only to find that the negative has gone missing. The effort to recover this negative is the impetus for Walter to make a journey to find him, wherever that may take him. As it turns out, that journey leads him halfway across the world to an adventure that rivals his own daydreams, which begin to abate as he gets closer to the goal of finding out the secret of "negative 25."
TSLWM gets where it's going, offering many rewards throughout. The skateboarding in Iceland, jumping out of a helicopter into the freezing sea off the coast of Greenland, all the while talking to his Match.com representative who is trying to spice up his otherwise bland profileit's just a pleasure to follow him on this journey. There's something to be said for getting there the long way.