The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Review

Aside from a single curious scene, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is not what you would expect from the director of Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. It's not jam packed with outrageous or silly comedic moments but instead of full of flights of wild fancy, both imagined and eventually as part of an increasingly exciting reality.

Walter Mitty is an ordinary guy who struggles to fill his online dating profile as he has nothing of interest to say about himself. He wants to get the attention of the girl in his office at Life Magazine by signing up to the dating website but it is only really in his imagination that he has the courage to speak to her. That is until the photo that is destined to become the final ever cover of Life Magazine gets mislaid and Mitty has to set off an adventure to find the photographer responsible for taking the elusive photo.

Walter Mitty lives a boring life. In order to get past this, Ben Stiller the director has to have Ben Stiller the actor in an array of wonderfully created day dreams from pouncing through windows to surfing down streets and close combat with his boss in a lift. These day dreams are exciting and brilliantly created, putting the epic into a very ordinary life and counteracting Stiller's determined underplaying as Mitty. Stiller the director is on fine form with many neat touches that make Mitty's secret life shine.

However when Mitty cannot find the photo from Sean Penn's photographer O'Connell, it is his reality that really starts to dazzle. Taking in Greenland and Iceland and underwater skirmishes with sharks, jumping out of helicopters, escaping volcano eruptions and climbing mountains, Mitty's day dreams suddenly pale in comparison with his real life shenanigans.

Despite the location hopping and outrageous set pieces, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty remains a deceptively simple story. Find the photo, get the girl, discover the world and free yourself. Mitty is fairly miserable in his job. He is threatened by redundancy and has little to show for his life. Adventure is the answer to all his problems, eliminating his need to day dream and instead giving him the courage and experience to be a truly interesting person.

While Stiller does a fantastic job of bringing the story to screen, it is the script that is lacking. The direction gives life to the ludicrous events (both real and imagined) but the dialogue and characters fail to produce much in the way of emotion. It looks great and has a decent soundtrack but the substance is paper thin. It trots out the occasional laugh but piles on far more in the way of grating product placement. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a feel good but ultimately frustrating experience.

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Fascinating Faces: Looper, Lawless and Gangster Squad

I've seen some fascinating faces in trailers over the last few weeks.  Three stars many of us know and love, still recognizable but undeniably transformed.  I am stunned by these faces and already itching to see more of the performances.  But how much of my excitement is just down to the make up and how much is due to the men behind the masks?

I offer you exhibits A, B and C as evidence.

Exhibit A: Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Looper

The Holly wood Reporter um... reported that 'Thanks to three hours in the makeup chair each morning, the actor transformed into a younger version of Bruce Willis for the role – in which the duo plays the same character at different ages.'

If you're not convinced about the transformation or just sad to see the handsome JGL mutilated, check out this little video I found on YouTube for a close comparison of the two actors.



Exhibit B: Guy Pearce in Lawless

Now I'm not sure what they've done to Pearce's face here but watching the trailer suggests this is going to be another fantastic performance to look out for.  In fact I don't even think this is down to make up.  Instead I think it's a combination of Pearce's slicked back hair, accent and tone of voice and most of all the faces he pulls in the trailer below.  Some might say this is bordering on OTT but I can't wait to see this performance.



Exhibit C: Sean Penn in The Gangster Squad

MTV says: 'A centerpiece of the trailer, it's hard to miss Sean Penn even under all of that makeup... The trailer gives lots of screen time to Penn, and when you also consider the prosthetics on his face, it's not hard to imagine that Warner Bros. would make a Best Supporting Actor push for him come Oscar season'.

He looks almost like something grotesque out of Dick Tracy.  But it's not just the make up and prosthetics, Penn seems totally transformed here.  It's another performance that looks incredible and will no doubt be a lot of fun to watch.



So are we in for a treat with these three or what?  And how much of these performances will come down to the physically transformed faces of the actors and how much is down to their acting skills.  It's a question that has bugged me ever since seeing one of my favourite performances ever on screen.  No doubt aided by magnificent make-up, but also a testament to the incredible talent of Charlize Theron, if you haven't seen Monster, I highly recommend it.  Never has a star been so unrecognizable and so brilliantly lost within a real-life character.