The movie equivalent of a quality at-bat

Rating: 5/10 (1 July 2014)

Stiller's film adaptation of the middle school staple Thurber story is one of those movies where you leave fully understanding where he was going with it. His quirky intense weirdness that worked so well in "Zoolander" and "Tropic Thunder" comes off more off-putting here more similar to "Dodgeball" or "The Cable Guy". Stiller's Mitty takes his dying job of physical photographic negative wrangler super-intensely and he is prepared to go down with the sinking "Life Magazine" ship. In a great piece of casting, Sean Penn plays his superstar photographer benefactor. Penn is supposed to be the catalyst to draw Mitty out of his dreaming and into some doing. However, we never really doubt Mitty will make the leap so the dramatic tension is low. We also know Life Magazine eventually went out of print so no surprises there. The nostalgia that permeates the writing and the message that life should be lived in the real life rather than on-line as a silicon chip and copper wire extension of human imagination are good but not particularly powerfully conveyed. Also, the run-time could have be shaved back to create a tighter narrative. In short, nicely done but not powerfully so.