The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)

Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) works at Life magazine as a “negative assets manager”. His world is humdrum but he daydreams incredible and heroic scenarios, often involving a colleague he has a crush on. When the magazine is threatened with closure and their jobs are endangered, Walter needs to locate a missing photographic negative for the image that will feature on the magazine’s final front cover. This takes him on a journey to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan in search of a photojournalist (Sean Penn), as his actual existence becomes as remarkable as his fantasy life. 

Stiller is charming as the “dull” worker who inevitably becomes a rugged hero. Kristen Wiig is hugely appealing as the woman he falls for (and she even gets to sing him David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”). Shirley MacLaine is a nicely rounded character as his mother. 

This rousing film is funny in places (such as Stiller’s ongoing conversation with a dating agency) and heartwarming in others (you root for him to keep his job and win over the girl). Often it looks like a mobile-phone advert (vivid colours, exotic locations, emotive music), but oddly that works because the idealised escapism of unreality is a central theme. 

It’s unusual, rewarding and refreshing.

Ghost Town (2008)

Ricky Gervais stars as Bertram Pincus, a mean-spirited English dentist in New York who briefly “dies” on the operating table. When he recovers, he’s suddenly able to see the spirits of dead people. Not only that, but these spirits also want him to communicate with their living friends and relatives to resolve a matter that’s keeping each of them in spiritual limbo. Pincus is pushed by dead businessman Frank (Greg Kinnear) to break up a relationship between his Egyptologist widow Gwen (Téa Leoni) and a pompous human-rights lawyer (Billy Campbell). But inevitably he begins to fall in love with her. 

It’s not a bad premise at all, but the problem is that it’s simply not very funny for the first half. It improves considerably in the second half as the surreal ghost story resolves into a romantic comedy. But throughout the story, Gervais seems somewhat miscast and he’s far less funny when he’s reading other people’s lines. 

Kristen Wiig is entertaining as a surgeon who’s preoccupied with her fake tan, and the brief scenes with her tend to come alive. 

The film works round to a satisfying conclusion despite some annoying music (romantic scenes are more affecting with instrumental tracks than with someone singing “earnestly”), but it’s uneven and could have been so much better.