![]() ![]() He has managed the photographic negatives at Life Magazine for 16 years, living vicariously through the hero photographer ( Sean Penn) who still shoots photos on celluloid in an Instagram world. ![]() Walter Mitty is a methodical man, carefully budgeting his life, looking after his elderly mother ( Shirley MacLaine), too dull to have anything to post on his eHarmony dating profile, too shy to reach out to that pretty new hire Cheryl (Wiig) at the office. It’s a charming, whimsical and ever-so-slight film, a bit of an over-reach but pleasant enough, even when it falls short. He’s not so much avoiding his dull reality as failing to, as the Latins said, “carpe diem.” In Ben Stiller‘s new film based on that 1939 story, the daydreaming Walter Mitty becomes a shy 40something who isn’t so much avoiding reality as using fantasy as an excuse for not seizing the day, for not asking the cute woman (Kristen Wiig) at the office out, for never traveling and experiencing the world. He avoids the boredom of errands and life’s routine that way. ![]() James Thurber‘s whimsical short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was about a bored, unassuming married man who escapes his humdrum life through wildly adventurous fantasies in which he becomes a war hero, a test pilot and the like. ![]()
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