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Let me be frank: to use the words of the august founder of this website, I hated, hated, hated this movie. 

From Ben Stiller's pantomimes of romantic hesitation in its opening moments as Walter Mitty goes all J. Alfred Prufrock on eHarmony.com, to costar Adam Scott's fussily styled fake beard, to the overall depiction of how a print magazine works/worked, to the consoling midtown-Manhattan romantic fade out, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," directed by Stiller from a script by Steve Conrad that is itself loosely adapted from James Thurber's legendary short story (or, to be accurate, from the main conceit of Thurber's story), grated on my nerves something fierce.

For all that, I'm giving the movie two stars, which, in star speak, translates to "fair." I'm not doing this as a sop to anyone who might end up charmed by the sometimes winsome and always self-help-book-like particulars of Stiller's romantic fable, which is can-do optimistic in rather stark contrast to Thurber's highly pessimistic mini-parable. I'm doing this because I'm not entirely sure that my negative reaction isn't a sort of personal carry-over from Stiller's last directorial effort, the intermittently amusing but entirely smug and hateful " Tropic Thunder ." From the opening credit sequence, featuring the tableau-like visuals that recall the work of Wes Anderson —for whom Stiller acted in the wonderful " The Royal Tenenbaums "—my way of seeing the movie was circumscribed by the belief that what was being expressed/communicated was nothing much more than Stiller's own privilege. In "Tropic Thunder," that privilege was articulated via biting the Hollywood hand that fed him and telling the audience that it was getting what it deserved; here, the privilege manifests itself in Stiller's ability to take a big film crew to Greenland, Iceland, and a relatively safe stand-in for Afghanistan to impart some vague, semi-earnest be-here-now bromides to the paying customers.

Stiller plays the title character, a daydreamer so focused that even as he learns that he's likely to lose his job as a "negative assets handler" in the photo department of the real-life photo-driven  Life (which ceased publication as a separate magazine in 2000, and was re-created as a newspaper supplement), he can't stop constructing fantasy scenarios involving the co-worker on whom he's crushing. (She is played, with surprisingly noncommittal likeability for such an appealingly idiosyncratic performer, by Kristen Wiig .) 

These scenarios generally involve giving Mitty superpowers, and so the first half of the movie has a near-quorum of explosions and flying-human scenes. However. A missing negative from the magazine's star globe-trotting photog ( Sean Penn ) sets Mitty on his own real-life globe-trotting adventure in search of the photog, who can tell him where the missing shot is. (You are likely to figure it out before Mitty does.) He hops on a helicopter flown by a drunken quasi-Nordic oaf, plummets into a stormy Arctic sea, skateboards to an Icelandic volcano, inadvertently tracks a snow leopard in South Asia, and more. Along the way he makes the Very Important Discovery that, while his fantasies might in some ways exercise his imagination, they are in a certain sense holding him back. In other words, don't dream it, be it.

I liked the message better in "Rocky Horror" myself. While everything Stiller attempts here has a real professional polish, what "Mitty" lacks is any sense of what life might actually be like for the kind of "ordinary man" Mitty represents. Adam Scott's dismissive, ignorant bean-counter, a company man who's overseeing the shutdown of Life , comes off more like a nasty CAA agent than a publishing executive. And every now and then a Mitty fantasy will show its snide hand: there's an entirely beside-any-point "Benjamin Button" parody here that wouldn't pass muster as an MTV Movie Awards sketch. These sorts of incidental irritations, I began to notice, led me to some possible overpicking of nits, as in "I was in Iceland last winter, and everyone there speaks English almost perfectly, Stiller!"

So again, there's a real question as to how reliable my assessment of "Mitty" as a weak-tea bunch of insincere pandering might be. On the other hand, your ability to swallow the movie's nth fake epiphany scored to the nth contrived-crescendo concoction by Arcade Fire or some other camouflaged emoting pomp rock outfit might not necessarily make you a better person than I. It may mean you are a more patient one, however.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

114 minutes

Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty

Kristen Wiig as Cheryl Melhoff

Adam Scott as Ted Hendricks

Kathryn Hahn as Odessa Mitty

Patton Oswalt as Todd

Terence Bernie Hines as Gary

Kathryn Hahn

• Ben Stiller
• Steve Conrad
• James Thurber

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The secret life of walter mitty, common sense media reviewers.

Inspiring seize-the-day tale with some peril and flirting.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

You are your worst barrier. Get out of your own wa

Walter Mitty is tired of being too careful. So whe

A man jumps into a building, crashing through the

Some flirting and an unrequited crush is part of t

Some swearing, including "bull," "s

The film is set in the Time and Life Building in N

Some drinking at a bar; one man is totally inebria

Parents need to know that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , starring and directed by Ben Stiller, may be based on James Thurber's short story, but it's very different from it and the original 1947 movie. It's a tween- and teen-friendly tale full of hope, with a can-do, go-big-or-go-home message…

Positive Messages

You are your worst barrier. Get out of your own way.

Positive Role Models

Walter Mitty is tired of being too careful. So when an opportunity arises that allows him to push past his limitations and help the magazine he has loved for so long, and possibly impress the woman he likes in the process, he finally goes for it.

Violence & Scariness

A man jumps into a building, crashing through the window, and the entire structure explodes soon after from a gas leak. A man threatens another at a bar, breaking a beer bottle and threatening his opponent with the shards. A man attacks a guy with a briefcase. A shark attacks a man, its jaws snapping.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some flirting and an unrequited crush is part of the story.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Some swearing, including "bull," "suck," "hell," "d--k" and "s--t."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The film is set in the Time and Life Building in NYC, which are the headquarters of Life Magazine, so there are plenty of mentions of the publication. Also: Dell, Papa John's, Sony, Cinnabon, Careerbuilder.com, Facebook, Instagram, Heinekin, Zero attache case. It's also practically an ad for e-Harmony, which is mentioned numerous times.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some drinking at a bar; one man is totally inebriated and pilots a helicopter.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , starring and directed by Ben Stiller , may be based on James Thurber's short story, but it's very different from it and the original 1947 movie. It's a tween- and teen-friendly tale full of hope, with a can-do, go-big-or-go-home message that's backed by sensational special effects. Expect some swearing, including "hell" and "s--t," and some jarring scenes of conflict, though no graphic violence. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (26)
• Kids say (71)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Extraordinary Movie Secret life of walter mitty

Unique film may be too dull for younger children, what's the story.

Walter Mitty ( Ben Stiller ), is the negative asset manager at Life magazine, which means he handles the negatives that arrive from the publication's best shutterbugs and makes sure they're done justice when they're processed and printed. The biggest talent to endorse Walter's skills is Sean O'Connell ( Sean Penn ), a globe-trotting, adventure-seeking, and often unreachable photographer. But that's as close to adventure as Walter gets. He's a devoted son to a mother ( Shirley MacLaine ) who's keenly observant of his life; a good brother to his underemployed actress-sister, Odessa ( Kathryn Hahn ), and a sweet colleague to Cheryl, a woman he has a crush on ( Kristen Wiig ) but can't seem to approach. He's even friendly with the customer service rep ( Patton Oswalt ) at the dating site he just joined, but hasn't really taken advantage of. But Walter's carefully choreographed and simple life gets complicated quickly when Sean sends a negative to be published for Life 's final cover, and it goes missing. Walter will have to leave his nest to find Sean, or risk the wrath of Ted Hendricks ( Adam Scott ), who's managing the magazine's transition online and deciding who stays and who goes.

Is It Any Good?

See this film for the cinematography, which frames nearly every shot like a perfectly composed photograph of the likes you'd see in, say, Life magazine, where Walter works in the movie. The colors are saturated, the edges are crisp. And there's a monumentality to it all, which is perfect for a film examining the measure of a man, in this case the unassuming Mitty, who gave up on his global-scale dreams once his father died and he needed to help support his family.

Stiller and company do a fine job -- it's gratifying to see Sean Penn tweak his adventuresome, elusive image in the role of the adventuresome, elusive O'Connell -- and especially Oswalt, who takes what's essentially a voicing role and elevates it. But the script is too spare for a story that poses big questions. (The original short story by James Thurber was brief, too.) And nearly everyone in it, including the ostensibly larger-than-life O'Connell (whose idea of profundity appears to be not taking a photo if he wants to just be in the moment), lands squarely in the midrange, characterization-wise, leaving no one truly exceptional for Walter to aspire to. Walter Mitty is fun to watch, but it still plays it safe.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the messages in the movie. What makes Walter finally take action? Does the movie try to inspire you to do something ? What holds people back from pursuing their dreams?

Talk about the workplace needling that goes on at Walter's office once the downsizing is announced. Is this bullying? How does Walter handle it, and why does the bully get away with it for a while?

If you've read the short story, how does the movie compare? What are some of the challenges of turning a book or story into a movie?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 25, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : April 15, 2014
• Cast : Adam Scott , Ben Stiller , Kristen Wiig
• Director : Ben Stiller
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Adventures , Book Characters
• Run time : 114 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : some crude comments, language and action violence
• Last updated : May 26, 2023

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clock This article was published more than  10 years ago

‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ review: Ben Stiller’s ambitious, uneven Thurber adaptation

This has been such an exceptional year in movies that calling a movie "perfectly likable" or even "good" starts to sound like faint praise. Which means that " The Secret Life of Walter Mitty ," Ben Stiller's contemporary adaptation of the James Thurber story , may well get lost in the shuffle of its betters. But that shouldn't detract from the strengths of a film that, while imperfect, has much to recommend it.

As the title character, Stiller brings his jut-jawed, laser-blue glare to a character who starts off as something of a passive cipher. As a longtime manager for “negative assets” at Life magazine, Walter processes the magazine’s photographers’ celluloid — in other words, he’s an obsolete guy working in an obsolete media platform within a soon-to-be all-digital art form. The film’s opening scene — wherein Walter hesitantly “winks” at a woman on an online dating forum — makes it clear: This is a man working at Life, rather than living it.

As a bland, ineffectual drone harboring fantasies of romance and ad­ven­ture, Stiller's Walter is without a doubt a direct descendent from Thurber's 1939 creation . But, working with Steve Conrad's screenplay, Stiller eventually takes enormous liberties with the story's plot, which in his hands takes increasingly digressive and literal flights of fancy. Thurber purists will be appalled, but, as yet another tale of a man coping with the 21st-century onslaught of technology, downsizing and alienation, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" feels very much of its time, cinematically and otherwise.

Because the film is so rooted in present-day anxieties, the filmmakers don’t need to underline, italicize and repeat its message — crystallized in the oft-repeated Life motto, about seeing things “thousands of miles away,” “hidden behind walls” and “dangerous to come to.” The digressions that Stiller takes as a director don’t always bear fruit, and the movie — in which the main plot driver is Walter’s nascent love for a co-worker played by Kristen Wiig — ends with an odd whimper, especially considering the spectacular set pieces that have gone before.

But there are moments of real value in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Conrad sneaks in lots of clever puns on Life, both humorous and dark, and the movie benefits from a bright, attractive visual design that lingers as lovingly on its most colorful interludes as on the magazine’s most iconic black-and-white portraits. When a company arrives to oversee the end of the print edition (an effort headed by a tiresomely one-note jerk played by Adam Scott), scenes of the wall-size pictures being de-accessioned suggest an entire history and cultural patrimony being carelessly discarded.

And there are passages of astonishing beauty in the film, which not only stages impressively produced scenes of daredeviltry within Walter's imagination, but also situates him against backdrops of magnificent natural scenery. One scene in particular — involving the David Bowie song " Space Oddity ," an errant helicopter and a mad dash for redemption — looks for all the world as if he's flying directly into a Rockwell Kent painting. (The MacGuffin coincides with a charming cameo appearance from a flawlessly cast actor in top self-effacing form.)

The unevenness of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and Stiller's recessive characterization of the title character, keep it from being an all-out crowd-pleaser. As a similar exploration of being in the moment and staying there, Spike Jonze's " Her ," also opening this week, is far more subtle and fully realized. Still, there's a winsome, attaboy appeal to "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" that deserves to be honored. It's a perfectly likable movie, and sometimes that's good enough.

PG. At area theaters. Contains some crude comments, profanity and action violence. 114 minutes.

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Movie Review

He Can Balance a Checkbook, but Not His Imagination

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By A.O. Scott

• Dec. 24, 2013

As imagined by Ben Stiller, Walter Mitty is a man out of step with his time. 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. He is also, in some respects, the opposite of just about every other comic hero in American movies today, including many played by Mr. Stiller. And “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” directed by Mr. 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.

In a world dominated by overgrown boy-men with runaway ids, Walter suffers from a highly unusual affliction: an excess of maturity. The first thing we see him doing is balancing his checkbook with a ballpoint pen. 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. 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. 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. Not Thurber’s feckless Everyman or Kaye’s holy fool, but a sad, decent guy in need of protection and love.

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. 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.

A relic of the analog world, Walter is in danger of being downsized out of a job as the magazine prepares its final print edition. His desperate efforts to locate a missing negative — and a mysterious photographer played by Sean Penn — lead him on a caper much wilder than anything he had dreamed up. Following cryptic clues (which Cheryl helps him decode), he travels to Iceland, Afghanistan and other far-flung places, and the movie becomes a lavish, surreal travelogue, blending digital effects with stunning landscape montages.

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. 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. Walter’s most notable trait is the one that everyone else undervalues or takes for granted: his goodness. 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. In one funny, poignant scene, he executes a series of impressive skateboard moves — real, not imaginary — while her back is turned. But showing off like that would be out of character in any case.

Or maybe not entirely. 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. 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.

There is a contradiction here: An ordinary fellow should not have to be quite so special to win our admiration. And this version of Walter Mitty undermines some of the democratic whimsy that has made his story such an appealing and durable modern myth. 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. 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.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). A bit of crude humor and some rough action.

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Before stepping into the dazzling fantasy world director-star Ben Stiller conjures up in his film adaptation of James Thurber’s classic 1939 short story, know this. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is eons away from the raucous farce of Stiller’s last directing effort, 2008’s Tropic Thunder . Stiller goes gentle into the good daydreams of Walter, a photo editor at Life magazine who finds it easier to imagine himself into the adventure photos on his desk than actually living them. Then he gets his big chance. Heading to Greenland to track down star photographer Sean O’Connell (a standout Sean Penn), Walter gets to climb mountains, splash with sharks and skateboard into a spewing volcano. Co-worker and dreamgirl Cheryl (a lovely, low-key Kristen Wiig) eggs him on. But Walter is in crisis. Digital has made him a dinosaur at work. And reality has far outstripped his make-believe. In his uniquely funny and unexpectedly tender movie, Stiller takes us on a personal journey of lingering resonance.

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty : Ben Stiller’s Dream of Life

This sweet romantic comedy about a moony guy and his dream girl is also a tribute to anyone who believes that a good job is worth doing well

I should almost disqualify myself from reviewing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty . The main character, played by Ben Stiller, works in midtown Manhattan’s Time + Life Building, my business home for 33 years. He is employed by a weekly Time Inc. news publication — Life , not TIME — which is about to be taken over and downsized; Time Inc. is to be spun off from its parent corporation, Time Warner, some time next year. Mitty’s job, now threatened, is to manage and care for the photographs of that great old publication; Mary Corliss ran the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Archive for 34 years, and in 2002 she was abruptly let go, and that invaluable archive shuttered, after a four-and-a-half-month strike in which Mary played an important role. For my wife and me, watching this movie was like sitting through our surprise dual biography, so many of its images triggering memories of poignancy or pleasure.

(READ: Mary and the Case of the Missing Film Stills ) Mitty , directed by Stiller from Steve Conrad’s script, still could’ve stunk; and it has its occasional longueurs. But even people not named Corliss, people not involved in the endangered crafts of print journalism and photo curating, should be able to connect with the movie’s sweet and mournful tone. Anthony Lane, reviewing the film in The New Yorker , said it “keeps glancing backward, at the lost and the obsolete.” Exactly, and in a good way: Mitty pays tribute to people who cherish the past and, in the face of extinction, are devoted to preserving it.

Beyond that, Mitty  is a lovely romantic comedy — the portrait of a man, nearly swallowed by the gulf between the world his lives in and the world he dreams of, who manages to bridge the two and to find Ms. Right in the workplace he cherishes.

The movie takes its title and little else from James Thurber ‘s 2,079-word story published in The New Yorker 75 years ago next March. Thurber’s Mitty is a henpecked husband driving his wife to her weekly hair date in Waterbury, Conn. As his wife or a garage mechanic berates him, Mitty slips into five fantasy roles: a Navy Captain, a genius surgeon, a master criminal, a pilot on a suicide mission and, finally, a hero facing a firing squad. So meager and hopeless is Mitty’s life that his last daydream is of violent death.

(READ: James Thurber’s story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” )

The 1947 movie musical, starring Danny Kaye , took a half-step toward the new film. Mitty works as an editor of pulp-fiction magazines, whose lurid tales fuel his reveries; and a mysterious woman leads him into real-life exploits more extravagant than his wildest woolgatherings. Stiller’s Mitty also goes on adventures, though of his own choosing: to find the photograph that will be on the cover of Life’ s final print edition. The expiring magazine is Walter’s secret  Life .

At the start, though, he is just a schlub with a furtive crush on his new Life colleague Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig). Logging on to eHarmony.com, he cannot even “wink” at Cheryl; the technology defeats him. Waiting for the train to take him downtown to work, Walter imagines a tenement building bursting into flames; like Superman, he vaults from the platform into the building to save Cheryl’s three-legged dog — and presents her with a furry prosthesis for the pet’s missing limb. At work, he materializes as a Spanish stud in a snow storm, wooing Cheryl with soothing words and a “poetry falcon”; and he sees himself as Benjamin Button, an infant with an old man’s face, cradled and nurtured by Cheryl.

Unfortunately for Walter, he also fantasizes talking sass to Ted (Adam Scott), the slimy, bearded, three-piece-suited dude whose job is to turn Life from a magazine to a digital domain in the speediest, most contemptible way possible. Ted thinks Walter, petrified in his dreams, is an idiot who is withholding that last cover picture, taken by revered photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn). In fact, the negative is missing, and locating it becomes Walter’s mission. He and the audience must follow three pictorial clues left by Sean; they lead Walter to Greenland, Iceland, the Himalayas and back home.

(READ: a review of the 1947 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by subscribing to TIME )

The Stiller and Kaye films twisted Thurber’s thesis: that modern man seeks freedom in dreams from nagging reality but can never escape. Serious fiction, including serious humorous fiction, paints the cage that imprisons humanity. Movies, in the 1940s or today, unlock the cell door; the screen is a wall showing the rich life that society may deny us. Stiller’s Mitty lives in that dream world. Early in the film, Walter may have little hope; yet he and Cheryl are destined to come together, if only because they have eyes of a magical blue — movie-star eyes. And when he goes on his world tour, this little man in a sedentary job turns out to be an expert bicyclist, runner and skateboarder. The movie has a lot of Walter exercising.

In development for nearly 20 years, the Mitty project was at one time or another to have starred Jim Carrey, Owen Wilson, Mike Myers or Sacha Baron Cohen, and to have been directed by Ron Howard, Chuck Russell, Steven Spielberg , Gore Verbinski or Mark Waters. The final script by Conrad, who had written The Weather Man for Verbinski, became Stiller’s fifth feature film as director, after Reality Bites , The Cable Guy , the great Zoolander and Tropic Thunder .

(SEE: Derek Zoolander on one of the Top 10 fake TIME magazine covers )

An auteur with an acute visual touch, Stiller fills the wide screen artfully and playfully. In one shot, our attention is directed to Walter in the rear of the frame: he’s a blur, even as his own undeveloped life is a picture that has not yet come into focus. The cue for Walter’s daydreams is often a subtle shift into a sharp, old-fashioned Kodachrome color. Later, on his intercontinental journey, he sees a flock of birds that assemble Cheryl’s face in the sky. As he treks the Himalayas, his words — “Now at 18,000 feet my mind drifts like the snow” — are scrawled across the screen like an entry in an adventurer’s diary. Stiller also extracts appealing performances from the supporting cast: Shirley MacLaine as Walter’s mother, Patton Oswalt as his eHarmony contact, Adrian Martinez as his dark-room assistant and especially Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as a drunken bear of a helicopter pilot.

The most romantic notion held by this very dreamy film is the value of an important job done well. Roaming corridors filled with giant reproductions of old Life covers, Walter is haunted by Henry Luce’s mission statement in the first issue of Life , synopsized here as: “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, to draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of Life .” And of Walter’s life, whether he is jumping from a helicopter into a turbulent sea infested with sharks or sitting in his photo archive trying to make a phantom picture come into focus.

(READ: What would Henry Luce make of the digital age? ) The Secret Life of Walter Mitty proclaims that the past is worth treasuring, every bit as much as the fantasy future. Like Walter — and two people named Corliss — this touching movie elegy believes not just in the wonder of what might be but in the glory of what was.

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty [Blu-ray]

• Prime Video $3.79 — $16.29
• Blu-ray $29.59
• DVD $799.60
• Multi-Format $9.99

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Product Description

Ben Stiller directs and stars in THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, James Thurber's classic story of a day-dreamer who escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of fantasies filled with heroism, romance and action. When his job along with that of his co-worker (Kristen Wiig) are threatened, Walter takes action in the real world embarking on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined.

Product details

• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.78:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 1.6 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ FOXS2289947BR
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ Blu-ray, AC-3, Color, Dolby, Multiple Formats, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, DTS Surround Sound
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 55 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ April 15, 2014
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig, Adam Scott
• Dubbed: ‏ : ‎ French, Spanish
• Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English, French, Spanish
• Language ‏ : ‎ Polish (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Studio ‏ : ‎ 20th Century Fox
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00H7KJTCG
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 2
• #1,096 in Comedy (Movies & TV)

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Quick Review: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) Blu-Ray

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