The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

James M Sandbrook

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

2013

‪Comedy‬, ‪Sci-Fi/Fantasy‬, ‪Thriller/Mystery‬ - ‪1 hour 54 minutes.

This is a film adaptation of James Thurber's 1939 short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The first movie of the same name starred popular actor Danny Kaye and was released in 1947.

I found this movie rather inspiring for my own life, it shows that a peson can go beyond daydreaming and have an interesting adventurous life.

Walter daydreams a lot. He zones out. I remember when I was younger of doing that and getting into all sorts of trouble, especially in school for completely missing the lessons because I was creaming of something amazing, adventurous, exciting and worthy.

Teachers would get upset at me, later on in life people would be talking in a group, I would be in that group and everyone as usual was ignoring me and I would zone out, just go into my own world.

I would do this with books as well. Once at a job I was reading while all the guys were talking. We had little in common so I would bury myself into books. One day I looked up from a book and the guys were all gone. They had received a phone call on a loud phone, all got up, about 9 of them, walking out of the room leaving me in bliss reading. It shows how my focus would be so intense that my physical surroundings were completely ignored. I had to be more careful in the future, I always demanded of myself that I always did my fair share of work wherever I worked.

Walter Mitty zones out and goes into a daydream state. He has a relatively boring day to day, 9-5, type job, and he probably feels that his life needs so much more, possibly like legendary photojournalist Sean O'Connell who gets up to all sorts of amazing adventures taking photos for the magazine that Walter works for.

The company is downsizing, many are getting laid off in the cuts as the company moves from the physical magazine to an online magazine.

It is easy to feel sorry for Walter and the staff as they have to put up with the arrogant man whp is in charge of the downsizing and who enjoys making fun of people. Walter in his imagination takes this guy in an epic street battle, which is fun to watch :-)

Walter falls for a co-worker who is new to the job, Cheryl Melhoff, played by Kristen Wiig, attractive, nice, well presented and caring, Cheryl is someone who Walter longs to meet.

Eventually this happens but not as Walter expects, and Cheryl ends up helping Walter search for the missing photograph “25” from Sean O'Connell himself and what he chose to be the cover photo for the last physical magazine to be printed.

Walter has a few zoned out imaginative day dreams of Cheryl as he becomes more and more attached to her.

Eventually Walter, played by Ben Stiller, who also directed, co-produced the movie, goes off in search of the very hard to find, always on the move in a new adventure, Sean O'Connell, played by Sean Penn. This leads on to much adventure, something that Walter is not used to but finds rather exhilarating, and less zoning out - instead of daydreaming adventure Walter is now living them.

Good movie.

All the best from

James M Sandbrook.

3rd of February 2021.