Lapping around the edges of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a memory of Bill Murray’s ill-advised 1984 fling at The Razor’s Edge. A comedian goes for deep thoughts and a philosophical message, but with a few jarring goofball sequences thrown in to keep the fans tuned in. Without question, Walter Mitty holds together a lot better than The Razor’s Edge, but the nagging suspicion that Stiller is trying to prove something keeps this movie from finding its wings.
Walter Mitty, a name synonymous with a mild-mannered fantasizer, was born in James Thurber’s imagination—and the pages of The New Yorker—in 1939.