I can’t honestly remember the last so-called “feel good” movie that actually made me feel good. The genre is as pandering as it gets, presenting with implausible warmth and positivity the oft-disproved notions that life is wonderful, odds can be overcome, and that the losing team had no right whatsoever to win “the big game.” My malarkey meter usually jumps off the charts the second an actor starts to give a rousing speech, and god help any movie that tries to declare itself “a triumph of the human spirit.”
So I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Ben Stiller, whose The Secret Life of Walter Mitty really is the first “feel good” movie in years that genuinely made me feel good. The film shares the genre’s typical, cringe-worthy, spit-shined view of humanity, and if nothing else it’s distractingly formulaic, but it has been produced with such a fine eye for wonder that even the most cloying of dramatic beats feels more-or-less earned. Sadly, it’s a false sense of satisfaction that dissipated by the third time traffic tried to kill me on the ride home from the theater, but I suppose it’s still something for the filmmakers to be proud of.
Ben Stiller is Walter Mitty, a Life Magazine employee who leads such a boring existence that he tends to zone out in the middle of conversations and imagine seducing the lovely lady who works down the hall or defeating his office arch-nemesis in lavishly choreographed skateboard races. Since his elaborate fantasies tend to play out in real time, they give his co-workers ample opportunity to snap their fingers in front of his face and throw various knick-knacks at his head just to see if he’s actually gone catatonic.
That would be enough for some films to coast on – hell, it was enough for James Thurber, whose original short story was fairly free of what you might normally call a “plot” – but although Ben Stiller obviously treasures these amusing scenarios and films them with the kind of aplomb usually reserved for big-budget blockbusters, he does eventually give Walter something to do.
You see, Life Magazine is going to cease its print publication for good, and Walter can’t find an important image from an acclaimed photographer (Sean Penn) that was supposed to grace the final cover, forcing him into a globe-trotting adventure just to fulfill the requirements of a day job that usually keeps him locked up in the basement. Those adventures spiral from the everyday gumption of booking a last-minute flight to Greenland to near-fatal bouts with volcanoes, sharks and jumping out of a helicopter in the middle of a hurricane, and for the longest time I thought the movie was going to wuss out on us and reveal that this was all just a dream; a twee ending that would have confirmed once and for all that the magic in life is relegated to the whimsies of filmmakers who look down on the rest of us for not living out our fantasies the way they do.
But again, credit where credit is due: Ben Stiller really does want us to take (most of) Walter Mitty’s incredible journey at face value, and he seems to genuinely believe that there really are miraculous events to witness and participate in, although usually on other continents. (America really does suck, I suppose.)
The plot takes a back seat quickly, or at least as soon as you start to see the final “twists” coming, which should be pretty much right away for most of us. There are only so many places The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’s thin mystery can go, at least dramatically speaking, which lessens the surprise but – you know what? – it still works, because those “revelations” are the only way the story could reasonably end while still affirming its thesis: that life is full of minor and major miracles.
Hackneyed as the story gets, Ben Stiller and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh film it in an extraordinary fashion, with compositions that cross the border into the “inspirational” and build a handsome villa there. By staging the events in the inner workings of Life Magazine, the filmmakers are given license to develop a beautiful visual dialogue that evokes many of the most impressive images of the 20th Century and onward, making the humdrum life of Walter Mitty and the wild adventures he stumbles into look like the stuff of legend.
Bolstered by a nearly too-perfect soundtrack of thumping, inspirational tunes, the aesthetic of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty quickly trumps any observant complaints you might have about the simplicity of the story, or the obvious wolf traps of sentiment into which the film repeatedly falls. The film lands on its feet, avoiding those deadly spikes, and wouldn’t you know it? It finds a quarter at the bottom for all of its troubles.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
