Film review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty gets a Hollywood makeover

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Starring: Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn
Director: Ben Stiller
Category: IIA

Ben Stiller's adaptation of James Thurber's famous short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty combines drama and deadpan humour in a bold attempt to take a small story and turn it into an epic, blaring, emotionally wrenching, socially relevant blockbuster.

First published in The New Yorker in 1939, Thurber's short story was about an ordinary man who relieved boredom by daydreaming that he was someone more exciting. The story struck a chord with readers, and Walter Mitty passed into the language as anyone who is a hopeless daydreamer.

The original film, in 1947, was a kind of a musical drama, and this new version is an extensive rewrite of the original with a mass of new storylines.

Stiller's Mitty is a shy daydreamer who's in charge of photographic negatives at Life magazine. When the magazine is taken over by a slimy corporation who wants to turn it into a website, Mitty is charged with making sure that the final cover shot - a secret photo by legendary photojournalist Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn) - makes it safely to the front cover.

Unfortunately, the all-important photo has been cut out of the 35mm film strip received by Mitty.