Is James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" Still in the rotation of things everybody is forced to read in English Lit? Well, in the event that it's not, the premise is that Walter Mitty is a mildly-henpecked average schlub who escapes from the crushing boredom of a shopping tripwith his wife by slipping into self-aggrandizing heroic daydreams touched-off by mundane events of his day (putting on his gloves conjures a fantasy of himself as the world's greatest surgeon, for example.) So... yeah, the framing device used by like 70% of TV sitcom "anthology episodes?" This is where that comes from.
Anyway, it's now being (loosely) adapted into a movie directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Yeah, I was immediately kind of queasy too, but take a look at this thing...
See? NOT exactly the "Along Came The Fockers To Watch The Envy Museum" shitstorm Stiller's name too often conjures of late, right? Right.
What worries me is that there's almost no dialogue, and when we DO get a closeup, line or anything that doesn't look like it was chosen for how well it cuts together as a "quietly soaring" indie-rock video looks just a little bit closer to the schtick that's more expected of this pedigree. But, for now, I'll choose to be optimistic about this. Stiller remains talented enough to still put out a "Tropic Thunder" or "Greenberg," so maybe this'll be one of those...
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