Ben Stiller's THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY Dreams Of Being A Feel Good Epic

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THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY

(Dir. Ben Stiller, 2013)

I remember reading James Thurber's 1939 short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” when I was a kid in elementary school and being charmed by its simple concept - i.e. average man has heroic daydreams throughout a mundane day shopping with his wife.



Later I saw the 1947 Norman Z. McLeod adaptation, starring Danny Kaye, and really wasn't into what they did with it. Apparently Thurber didn't either, much like how P.L. Travers hated what Disney did to MARY POPPINS (horribly handled in the currently playing SAVING MR. BANKS), Thurber protested the songs and screenplay to no avail.



Now Ben Stiller, for his fifth film as director, tackles the concept in this even looser adaptation that aims to be a feel good epic for the whole family. Unfortunately despite its hip cast (Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Sean Penn, Adam Scott, Patton Oswalt), snazzy soundtrack (Arcade Fire, Rogue Wave, David Bowie), and lavish production values (Stuart Dryberg's cinematography is gorgeous) the charm of the original is lost in action.



We first meet Stiller's Mitty in his sterile looking drab New York apartment trying, but failing, to “send a wink” on his eHarmony account to a co-worker he's smitten with (Wiig).



Obviously Stiller, by way of Steve Conrad's screenplay, is updating Mitty for the internet age, a theme also present in his job as a negative assets manager at Life Magazine being threatened by the company making the shift from print to digital.



Mitty, who we're told by his mother (Shirley MaClaine) worked at Papa John's when he was a teenager, is another in the long line of shy awkward characters that Stiller has made his movie career out of - guys who learn through the course of their films how to come of their shells.



Between Stiller's fantasies about saving a dog from a burning building, engaging in a surreal super hero-esque battle with Scott as his arrogant dick of a boss, and wooing Wiig by bursting through the wall as a rugged arctic explorer, a plot involving a missing negative intended for the last print edition cover of Life emerges.



Of course, this means Stiller has got to ditch the dreaming and do some actual adventuring. He leaves his office and travels across the globe to Greenland, Iceland, and the Himalayas to find the photographer (Sean Penn at his crinkly grittiest), making the movie come off like Walter Mitty Vs. The Volcano especially because, well, he has to run from an erupting one at one point. 



Along the way, Oswalt, as an eHarmony representative, calls Stiller to get him to beef up the “been there, done that” section of his account on the dating site. You see, it seems our protagonist's main problem is that he's never gone anywhere.



It also seems like the real secret Mitty is hiding is that he has some mad skateboarding skills - these really come in handy on a winding mountain road in Iceland.



It's not just that Stiller's WALTER MITTY is a big commercial movie, it feels like a big commercial itself with its bumper sticker sayings and mottos.



But what is it a commercial for? eHarmony? Life.com? Papa John's?



There's such a self conscious grab-life-by-the-balls vibe, transparent in such moments as Wiig telling Stiller that Bowie's “Space Oddity” is about “courage and going into the unknown” (Wiig even sings the song in one of Stiller's visions).



On the plus side, Stiller and Wiig, who it's nice to see playing a real believable person for once, have an easy going chemistry in their scenes together, but overall the comedy feels too light, the fantasies too forced, and tonally it's all over the place.



This is apparent in one of Mitty's daydreams about having that “Benjamin Button disease thing” where he's aging backwards and we see a CGI-ed Stiller as a tiny old man in Wiig's arms. This seems more akin to the spoofiness of his work in ZOOLANDER and TROPIC THUNDER than the spirit of the rest of the film.



I was also disappointed at how easily predictable all the film's pay-offs are. There are no surprises at how the narrative concerning Penn's lost photo wraps up, and the love story lacks any emotional pull.



WALTER MITTY is not without wit, and there's a fair amount of likability to the proceedings, but it's sad that Stiller and co. couldn't dream up something a whole lot better.





More later...

A Few DVD Reviews & More Awards Season Whatnot

As it's Awards season, there's no lack of lists and polls, or bitchin' about the results of said lists and polls going on. 



So I thought I'd mention that I voted in the 2012 Muriel Awards, the results of which are being posted starting today. Check them out here. Be sure to keep checking back as they will be trickled out over the next few weeks.

I just submitted my 2012 movie rankings to The LAMB (the Large Association of Movie Blogs). I'll let you know when those are posted.



And I wrote about the Oscar nominated shorts in last Friday's Raleigh N & O: “Oscar short film nominees offer a lot of entertainment” (Feb. 1st, 2013)

Now for a few reviews of movies from last year I'm catching up with:

THE WATCH (Dir. Akiva Schaffer, 2012)

There are more CGI effects than there are laughs, or even attempts at laughs, in last summer’s flop comedy THE WATCH, which I just watched on DVD. Ben Stiller, in his standard uptight goody two shoes role, stars as a Costco manager who starts a neighborhood watch with Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade to get to the bottom of the mysterious murder of one of Stiller's Costco security guards (Joseph A. Nunez).

For a while it doesn’t even feel like the movie has a screenplay as it largely consist of the four leads riffing on top of the flimsy material, and once it gets to its major set pieces involving invading aliens, the gags are almost non-existent.

Schaffer, one-third of the SNL Digital Shorts masterminds/musical satirists The Lonely Island (the other members, Adam Sanberg and Jorma Taccone put in a cameo in an orgy scene), competently stitches together what Jared Stern, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg supposedly wrote down, but it never amounts to anything more than half-assed humor. Schaffer’s previous film, HOT ROD, was actually laugh out loud funny, you're lucky to get a few mild chuckles out of this.

Rosemarie DeWitt, a familiar face from quite a few recent indie films, plays Stiller's wife in what's mainly a sideline role, but she gets to run around with the guys during the Costco-set climatic battle, so at least she gets out of the house. Vaughn's wife (Erinn Hayes) isn't so lucky as she's only in one scene and doesn't even have a line.

I almost snickered a little when Will Forte (SNL, MACGRUBER) as a snarky cop who ridicules Stiller and crew would pop up, and some of Vaughn’s motor-mouthed character’s banter who see himself as a “cool dad” made me come close to smiling, and occasionally got close to giggling at Ayoade, who though strongly underutilized, is a welcome fresh face among the other’s overly familiar shtick, but I just couldn’t get down with the dick joke mentality and the sloppy plotting. So another less than stellar Ben Stiller vehicle that wasn’t a smash, what else is new?

COMPLIANCE (Dir. Craig Zobel, 2012)

There are parts of this film that made me so uncomfortable I felt like leaving the room, but I knew I’d still be looking back at the screen through the doorway if I did. Screenwriter/director Zobel based his film, his second after GREAT WORLD OF SOUND, on a real life scenario that’s has surprisingly happened many times - a prank call that leads to sexual assault.

At a fictional Chickwich fast food restaurant, in Ohio (Ohio again!), the manager (Ann Dowd) gets a call from a man claiming to be a police officer who has been in touch with the chain’s regional manager. The man, who we only hear as a disembodied voice for the first third of the film, tells Dowd that one of her employees, a 19-year old blonde cashier, has stolen money from a customer, and that this is part of a larger investigation.

Dowd brings the girl (Dreama Walker) to the backroom office and questions her about the theft following the man’s instructions. Walker denies taking the money, and Dowd can’t find it in her pockets or purse. The man then instructs Dowd to perform a strip search. With another supervisor (Ashlie Atkinson) present, Walker takes off all her clothes, including her underwear, and we know that phony voice of authority is going to take this twisted gag as far as he can go.

By this time, we have gotten random shots of the man, played by Pat Healy, who is obviously not a cop, at his home with a bunch of store bought calling cards. Healy lounges around as he gives orders on the phone, makes a sandwich, waters plants, etc. all the while putting these poor people through humiliating sexual situations of his own devising. 

A co-worker of comparable age to Walker, who spends most of her role naked with only a Chickwich apron covering her, Philip Ettinger, refuses to go along with what Healy tells him to do, but Dowd’s boyfriend (Bill Camp), called in from a night drinking, is more susceptible. The restaurant is slammed while this is all going on, so Dowd is torn away to serve customers up front and is majorly oblivious to how crazy-go-nuts it gets.

As if to remind us that it's an art film, Zobel intersperses close-ups of fries sizzling in grease, grimy floors, and other mundane bits of the restaurant’s unappealing décor throughout the film, so you fully get the closed-in vibe of this messed-up material. What I couldn’t stop thinking was, are these people really that stupid to not question that anybody could just call and identify themselves as police? Then I had to remind myself that this has happened, and that, yes, people can get that horribly manipulated.

Although it can come across as exploitive speculation on the premise of the strip search prank call scam, COMPLIANCE is cringe-inducing cinema at is most involving. It falters in its last 10-15 minutes when it becomes a procedural crack down on the caller, and then gives us an un-insightful scene of Dowd being interviewed on a magazine style news show about the ordeal, but for a large compelling chunk of its running time, it’s one of 2012’s best, and oddest, thrillers.

More later...

Faulty TOWER HEIST Has A Few Laughs

TOWER HEIST (Dir. Brett Ratner, 2011)

This began life as a notion Eddie Murphy had for a “black OCEAN’S 11’” but they threw some money at it and made it into a concept, and then later turned it into an idea.



That idea is a Ben Stiller movie with Murphy as a supporting player, ganging up with Matthew Broderick, Gabourey Sidibe (PRECIOUS), Michael Peña, and Casey Affleck to rob a billionaire (Alan Alda) who stole their pensions.



Unfortunately, even with that incredibly capable cast and that promising premise, TOWER HEIST is a half baked comic crime caper that comes close to bringing big laughs, but never quite delivers.



There are a fair amount of small laughs throughout the film, and I caught myself smiling at the shenanigans onscreen a few times, but the all-too-familiar construction of the material kept holding back the funny.



The first half is all set-up with Stiller as the by-the-book building manager of a luxurious Manhattan high rise (obviously modeled on the Trump Tower) realizing how evil Alda is after the Ponzi scheming penthouse owner is charged with financial fraud.



With the help of small-time crook Murphy, Stiller enlists his co-worker co-horts (Sidibe, Peña, and Affleck) and Broderick, as a down on his luck Wall Street broker just evicted from his tower apartment, to pull off a big-time job – stealing 20 million from Alda’s penthouse safe.



The film has been touted as a comeback for Murphy, and while there’s an undeniable charge to seeing him again assume the foul mouthed quick tempered persona that he had abandoned for family fare over a decade ago, too many scenes have no payoffs.



In one scene in which Murphy is training the crew to be thieves he gives them bobby pins and locks them on a building’s roof in the extreme cold. Once Murphy says his lines (like “here’s your punk ass bobby pin”) and leaves, the scene is over – we don’t get seeing the guys attempting to pick the lock because I think screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson couldn’t come up with anything funny there and thought Murphy’s shtick would be enough.



This is a method they seem to employ throughout: let’s just get these guys bickering in set piece after set piece and people will be laughing so hard they won’t notice the predictable plot mechanics.



Director Ratner doesn’t provide a strong enough balance between laughs and thrills to make TOWER HEIST anything special - at its best it’s likably perfunctory. I also could’ve done without the Téa Leoni as an FBI agent who is on to both good guy Stiller and bad guy Alda subplot, but usually I can do without Téa Leoni so there’s that.



Like I said, I did lightly laugh here and there (not just at Murphy as Broderick, Sidibe and Peña also have their moments), and I felt a little excitement during a scene involving Alda’s Ferrarri (allegedly once owned by Steve McQueen) being dangled from a cable from the top of the tower, but with its many plot-holes and lack of payoffs this is nowhere close to how good it could’ve been.



Here’s hoping Murphy’s newly proposed project that remolds his original black ensemble comedy notion into something titled JAMAL AND TYRELL AND OMAR AND BRICK AND MICHAEL'S WACK-ASS WEEKEND gets a lot further past the idea stage.



More later...