But the character’s spiritual trajectory remains vague, maybe because Walter himself is something of a nullity, a conceit more than a character. We pick up from contextual cues (and from the staggeringly gorgeous landscapes that surround him) that these must be the moments in which Walter is learning to truly experience life-something that, despite his long employment at a magazine by that name, he clearly knows next to nothing about. As actors directing themselves will tend to do, Stiller leaves the camera on his reflective face for long periods as he ponders, for example, getting on that copter with the drunk pilot (a choice that the movie frames, somewhat oddly, as an act of spiritual courage) or skateboarding at top speed down a deserted Icelandic highway.
But in too many scenes-especially those involving Walter’s private revelations over the course of his various road trips- muted slides into muffled. Walter’s own job seems safe-he’s been at the company 16 years, after all-until he misplaces a negative from the legendary photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn) that was intended for Life’s final cover.Īs Cheryl Melhoff, the Life co-worker on whom Walter harbors an entirely secret crush (and who helps him in his search for the mysterious missing negative), Kristen Wiig gives an understated but appealing performance that suits the movie’s muted mood. His new boss, the callow Ted Hendricks (an officious and luxuriantly bearded Adam Scott) is scarcely able to fake caring as he announces the impending firings to the magazine’s staff. Stiller’s Walter is a Life photo archivist-or, in his dull description of his own job, a “negative assets manager”-who’s anxious about being downsized as the magazine moves to an all-online format. Maybe this long incubation period accounts for the movie’s strange out-of-time quality: Though it’s apparently set in the present day, the film chronicles the folding of Life magazine as a print publication, an event that happened more than a decade ago. This Walter Mitty feels like a creation that’s taken too long to fight its way out of its creator’s brain (and indeed Stiller and others have been trying, with quixotic dedication, to get the film made for almost two decades).
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