The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The secret life of Walter Mitty - 114min – PG

I am not a huge Ben Stiller fan; most of his work is either hit or miss with me (mostly miss). This movie speaks to me. I truly enjoyed the message this story tells. There are some mild problems with the way this story is told but I really love the characters. The message of stop dreaming and start living are what resonate most with me. This is such a strong message, I hope people will not be bogged down by technical details. When it comes to movies that touch my heart, I am an easy sell for a green light. Go ahead and hate me for it but I can’t help loving this movie and what it stands for.

Walter (Ben Stiller) is a man who for the past 16 years has worked for LIFE magazine. They are going through a transition from a print publication to an online publication. He is in charge of prepping the cover picture for the last issue ever printed. There is a problem: the negative for the picture is missing. Walter has to take action find the missing slide.

Walter lost his father when he was a teenager and has been responsible for helping provide for his family and has never really had his own life. To escape reality he spends long moments standing in a daze lost in a daydream of what he would like to have happen.

Walter has a crush on Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), a woman from work. She uses an online dating service and he joins the same dating company hoping to use it to connect. When he tries to contact her through the sight he gets an error message because he doesn’t have anything in his profile. He contacts support where Todd (Patton Oswalt) from the customer service department helps him fill out his online form. It’s through Todd’s eyes we see Walter’s inadvertent growth from dreamer to doer. Todd really understands the change he sees in Walter. I think it would be very therapeutic to meet Mr. Oswalt in an airport and have a Cinnabon and some words of encouragement.

Kristen Wiig vexes me. I disliked her work on SNL because she was never very funny to me. At times her skit characters were painful to watch. However on the big screen, I completely fall in love with her. She shines with honest feelings and natural beauty. She is pure cinema gold. Ms. Wiig, please don’t ever make a SNL based move on your characters. Keep doing new stuff because you are talented.

This is directed by Ben Stiller and you can see his passion for this story come through in his acting and the overall emotion of the film. Most critics aren’t going to like it because of story problems, but I think they are not looking at the soul of the film. I acknowledge the problems but I love the message so I had to write this up right after watching it. Of course it took me about a month to post it but that’s beside the point.

The central message is that we try very hard to look for the things that are meaningful in our loves ever if they are hidden in the secret pockets of our wallets. This is not a spoiler because it’s completely telegraphed in the movie. I don’t think that it was poor storytelling; I think this was obvious on purpose. The journey of the story is more important than the destination. Walter learns a lot on this trip and we make a connection to him because he does what want to do, learn his place in this world. Kind of like us, we don’t need to travel the world to find the answers we are looking for. Our answers are right here, in our country, our states, and towns and even in our own homes.

The underlying message with this film is we need to break out of the rut life puts us in. Try something new, have the courage to make connections with other people. Eat at a new locally owned restaurant you drive past almost every day. Go out to the farmers market try some fresh food and look at handmade crafts. Look at your community and see if there are new cultural events around that will expose you to a new culture, take a martial arts class in an art you have always wanted to study. It doesn't matter what you do, it just matters you do something.

I might be reading way too much into this, but that’s the impression this movie left with so I am going to take a chapter out of Walter’s book and go have dinner at a new place tonight and then go explore some parts of the town I don’t normally see. And book a flight to India. Yes you can look around locally at changing your life, but why not go big? Wish me luck.

The Watch

The Watch – 101Min – R

I so wanted this movie to be good, it has some really talented actors in it but unfortunately it fell flat. I was hoping that a great alien comedy in the style of Shaun of the Dead was on its way and it turns out to be more of a long infomercial for Costco from the Sci Fi channel. The main problem was that the trailer takes all of the wind out of the funny parts of the movie. I appreciated some aspects of the movie but overall it’s not worth the time it takes to get to them. In hoping that this movie was at least a yellow light it disappointedly falls squarely into the Red light category. Too bad movies don’t have as flexible a return policy as Costco does, because they need their money back. No questions asked.

Evan (Ben Stiller) is a manager of the local Costco. He spends his time making sure that his life is full of activities because he incredibly involved with his community. One of his employees dies a gruesome death and he now makes it his personal mission to find the killer. He organizes a neighborhood watch and gets three other interested parties. Franklin (Jonah Hill) a police academy wash out, Bob (Vince Vaughn) a mostly single dad who has a kick-ass man cave and Jamarcus (Richard Ayoade) the token black guy in Evans personal goal of having one of every race as a friend.
They set about looking for the killer and uncover an alien plot to build a transmitter under the Costco and bring in an invasion force. The boys work together to stop the invasion and still work on personal issues in their lives.

The movie falls short on delivering one clear story. The characters are fighting the huge invasion and also distracted by their own lives. The time it takes to fully develop the secondary stories takes away from the main plot line and doesn’t give us any insight into the motivations of the characters, which I think is the only reason they were added.

Akiva Schaffer has made me laugh with his work on SNL and other projects but this one somehow seems to be lost in its own need to belabor the story with long stretches to get from one funny bit to another. The funny parts don’t string together in a way that tells a good story.

Richard Ayoade is one of the funnies actors I have seen in a long time, he has an excellent grasp of the straight man and his comedic timing is spot on. Vince Vaughn is doing what he does best being the loud guy that has no filter to check to see if he should be saying what he is saying. This time they added some personality to him as a caring father and it works really well. He is loud rude and a bull in the verbal china shop but it plays well.

Ben Stiller seems to be just walking through the parts and not focused, he lost his stride on the string of Focker movies and has not gotten it back yet. Jonah Hill does not do anything new, he has an edgy character but he only delivers the lines like he did on every other character he has played.

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Evan is not a likable character, he is keeping from his wife that he is sterile. She is trying everything to make sure they have a baby and he keeps her in the dark. Bob is right that he needs to tell her but this subplot does nothing for the story other than paint Evan as a jerk.

 Bobs relationship with his daughter was great, dysfunctional but great. It worked for the character and made Bob’s brashness bearable because his heart was in the right place.

The guest appearance by the Lonely Island crew was funny and again they are obsessed with their dicks. I should have known that as the director of this movie, Akiva would have made the penis the weak point of the aliens. I have never been a fan of dick jokes, and if you are going to use them at least make them witty.

What do you want from a comedy? What movie have you wanted to be good and it turn out not to be.

Tower Heist

Tower Heist – 104min – PG13

I try not to judge a movie before I have seen it but I was sorely unimpressed with the trailers for this film. This movie suffers from poor trailer representation. It was a much better film than the trailers made it out to be. However, that does not mean it was a good film. There was some enjoyment for the ride but it did not deliver on great entertainment. I have mentioned in in the past that I am a science fiction fan so I have a good suspension of disbelief skill, but I had some serious issues with this movie from a plausibility standpoint. It was nice to see some old names back on screen. I just hope they do something better next time. I was expecting to give this movie a red light but I have to move it up to a Yellow.

The story is about Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a mastermind of a Ponzi scheme. He has stolen the money of all of his investors; among them is the entire staff of his building. Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) the building manager who performs his duty extremely well. Charlie (Casey Affleck) the concierge. The last two people of interest on the staff are one of the maids Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) and Enrique (Michael Pena) the elevator operator.

Josh decides to get their money back and enlisted help of two other people. Slide (Eddie Murphy), a street wise thief and Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) a former tenant who was fired from his Merrill Lynch job and evicted from the tower.

Together they start to plan a robbery of the nest egg that Mr. Shaw has in his apartment. This unlikely team has asked Slide to teach them how to steal, and the movie takes on a feel of training them to perform the tasks needed to pull off this robbery.

This story has a few twist in it that I did not expect, and some that I do not believe. If it were written better it might have been an excellent film. This was a great idea that was executed poorly. The writers on this all seem to be new and if not new they have a disastrous credit list. The rogues gallery of writers consists of Ted Griffin, Jeff Nathanson, Adam Cooper, Bill Collage. With so many people you would think they could have spotted some of the plot holes in the script. The director (Brett Ratner) has done a few hits in the past but he has also had his share of misses. Perhaps he should stick to producing.

The main problem in this movie is the disjointed ending that seems to be rushed because they ran out of money or time. It’s like they ran out of steam in story telling or realized they wrote themselves into a corner and said ”and they all make it out and everyone was ok, the end”.

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The end should have been about everyone at the tower helping the robbery go down after things went sideways. The end just magically happened. What really went down is the better story. The ending was the only reason this movie falls into the yellow light category.

Instead of having Josh pay for the crime to have a failed attempt at a lesson that someone must pay for this act of vigilantism. It should have been just like a heist film and the real bad guy does get his just deserts. If you have a two ton car resting on an elevator you can stretch the disbelief to make a happy ending.

I enjoyed Tea Leoni as Special Agent Claire Denham. Her character was done well and I liked her no nonsense approach to the character. She has always struck me as someone who brings realism to the roles she plays. It’s enjoyable to watch her work. Eddie Murphy on the other hand did nothing memorable for me in the movie. He should have played it more rough edge as opposed to the stereotypical street criminal.

What was your favorite Eddie murphy role and your least favorite? Let’s talk about the ups and downs of his carrier.

Little Fockers

Little Fockers rated PG 13 98 min

I have never been a fan of this franchise; I am going to temper my review with a focus on the filming aspects then go into my own views of the film. The movie had no technical gafs, and feeling of the film was good, it had good tempo and it moved from scene to scene smoothly. The cast had good chemistry together and everyone was believable in their roles. I enjoyed the music and the lighting of the film. I am trying to look at the good things for this film and I am really coming up short. All of these aspects I have listed are really weak. Aside from doing a good job in making a film, I am now faced with the fact that this is not a movie worth making. Really it was hard for me to watch the talented cast and crew sell this movie with all of their hearts and souls and it falling soooo flat. It was like watching someone tell a joke that you already know and suffer through as they tell it badly. The Jokes were a rehash of the poor dynamic between Greg (Ben Stiller) and his father in law Jack (Robert De Niro). They mix in some of the awkwardness of Kevin (Owen Wilson) interest in Greg’s wife in the second film and hoped that it would be a good. The new members of the cast are the twins who are adorable in their perspective roles (Daisy Tahan and Colin Baiocchi) but are not enough of a draw to pull this story back from the brink. Putting in the new dynamic of twins and the quirkiness of parenthood and the stress people go through in this change of life is usually comedy gold but for some reason it did not pay off for them. I think the writer should have focused on the aspects of that underlying story instead of beating the dead horse of the previous films. Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand characters were very enjoyable but again not enough to make this movie a win for me.

Paul Weitz takes the reins in this film taking over for Jay Roach. I have to say that both of these Directors are hit and miss with my viewership. For Paul Weitz I think his best work was on About A Boy. And Jay Roach best work was on the Austin Powers and did well on the first installment but should have stopped there. At the time of this post ther are rumors of a 4th in that series.

I would not recommend this film even if you are a fan of the other films. They are milking this for all its worth. The Cast may have a great time in doing these films but I would suggest they follow the Model of A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. I have to admit they all work well together let’s just get them some better material to work with.