Those that dream and those that do

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2018)

For those who remember the Sam Goldwyn film on The Secret Life Of Walter
Mitty you will find this new version nothing like it. Ben Stiller got some laughs
in for sure, but his general treatment of the classic James Thurber story is far
different than the one that starred Danny Kaye back in the day. Goldwyn and
Kaye opted for straight comedy.
Stiller's MItty gets a lot of time to daydream, he's got a job keeping all the
photographs that Life Magazine has had since it's inception. But new management in the form of Adam Scott is shaking things up as Life will now be strictly an on line publication. Still there's one issue to be gotten out and
Stiller has mislaid the negative he was sent from photographer Sean Penn.
Penn lives the life going out to exciting and dangerous places to bring back the
news photographs for Life that Stiller only dreams about daily. So in that
month's time Stiller embarks on a global search for Penn based on some
very fragmentary evidence of where Penn is. Penn likes the solitary life in a
sense he and Stiller make a complete human being, Penn with the action and
Stiller with the purpose that never gets put into action until now.
Some performances of note are Shirley MacLaine as Stiller's mother, Kristen Wiig as the object of Stiller's affections that he hasn't the nerve to speak to
until recently, and Adam Scott who is definitely representative of the Age of
Trump as Stiller's new boss come in for the liquidation of a great institution.
Some nice location photography is also part of The Secret Life Of Walter MItty
which in the end isn't so secret any more.