But now our identification gives way to envy, and he is another one of those enchanted people the rest of us can only dream of becoming. He used to be one of us: a self-deluded dreamer charmed by his unruly creative powers, a willing prisoner of his appetite for escapism. And this version of Walter Mitty undermines some of the democratic whimsy that has made his story such an appealing and durable modern myth. There is a contradiction here: An ordinary fellow should not have to be quite so special to win our admiration. Stiller (working from a screenplay by Steven Conrad) is not content to be the hero of the story he turns Walter into an almost-martyr and a would-be saint, a mystical self-help guru whose journey of self-discovery makes him better than everyone else, though of course he is too enlightened to say so. Though it is a celebration of modesty, there is also quite a lot of vanity in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” (And quite a lot of corporate propaganda too, for Papa John’s Pizza, Cinnabon and eHarmony, the online dating site represented by the irreverent, just-a-regular-guy-like-you presence of Patton Oswalt.) Mr. But showing off like that would be out of character in any case. In one funny, poignant scene, he executes a series of impressive skateboard moves - real, not imaginary - while her back is turned. Walter is a low-key suitor, and Cheryl is drawn to him for his thoughtfulness and quiet sense of humor rather than for the alpha-male derring-do he secretly possesses. Walter’s most notable trait is the one that everyone else undervalues or takes for granted: his goodness. This is Walter Mitty by way of Marty, the soulful Bronx butcher played by Ernest Borgnine in the 1955 film that won the Oscar for best picture. It also, somewhat more riskily, tries to fold the kind of playful, wide-eyed high spirits familiar from the “Night at the Museum” movies into what is in effect a midlife melodrama. Employed in the photography department at Life magazine, he has a crush on a co-worker named Cheryl (Kristen Wiig, with her natural silliness in check and an adorable habit of crinkling up her nose) and a big problem with the new bosses, a squad of bearded, skinny-suited tech jerks led by Adam Scott. Walter’s wild bouts of invention - he pictures himself leaping through the window of a burning building, tearing through the streets of Manhattan on a wild action-movie chase and doing other superhero-type stuff - represent some of the adventure he has sacrificed in a life of duty and drudgery. Not Thurber’s feckless Everyman or Kaye’s holy fool, but a sad, decent guy in need of protection and love. Workplace bullies might make fun of him, mocking his nerdy clothes and self-effacing manner, but from the start this Walter is, for the audience, a magnet for our sympathy. As a teenager, Walter lost his father, and ever since then he has worked to support his mother (Shirley MacLaine) and sister (Kathryn Hahn) and to hold onto a sense of security in an uncertain universe. Though we might be tempted, at first, to suppose that his highly developed sense of responsibility is the result of a compulsive personality, we soon learn that it arises from personal tragedy. The first thing we see him doing is balancing his checkbook with a ballpoint pen. In a world dominated by overgrown boy-men with runaway ids, Walter suffers from a highly unusual affliction: an excess of maturity. Stiller (who takes the title role), has a dreamy, melancholy tone quite different from what you might expect to find in a big-budget holiday comedy. And “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” directed by Mr. He is also, in some respects, the opposite of just about every other comic hero in American movies today, including many played by Mr. An archetypal daydreamer introduced to the public by James Thurber as a henpecked suburban husband and later impersonated on screen by Danny Kaye as a misunderstood, starry-eyed sweetheart with a lovely singing voice, Walter has evolved into a modern office drone with an unusually active fantasy life. As imagined by Ben Stiller, Walter Mitty is a man out of step with his time.
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