loadingFirst though Walter Mitty, a character first created in 1939 by James Thurber in a short story just two and a half pages long about a man who daydreams ambitiously while his wife goes to
the hairdresser. In 1947, Danny Kaye played him as a pulp novel proofreader, but for 2013 Ben Stiller has reinvented him as a curator of negatives, cue various puns on the now defunct photo journal Life. Stuck inside, gazing only at the adventures of others, bedazzled by media images, Mitty dreams of wild and heroic exploits for the benefit of all the goodies in the special effects toy books. He also yearns for a co-worker played by Kristen Wiig. But halfway through the film, he does get out and the whole film changes pace along with locations. Stiller director himself here not for the first time, he did it previously with comedies, Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. And he's also extended his range as an actor with a leading dramatic role in Noah Baumbach's Greenberg. But Walter Mitty is a big film from a small premise with a number of themes, even if they are not all fully developed. Ben Stiller explained why he expanded on Thurber's famous tale.
\tone and an experience that this guy's having running his errands for his wife and then this incredible fantasy life he has in his head. And that's what's amazing to me about the short stories, that's it's lived
on that long, because it's so... I think so well written and so evocative.\