Nearly everyone in the world has been guilty of daydreaming from time to time, escaping the drudgery of their day to day affairs with a short mental vacation. Those kinds of fantasies are a big part of Ben Stiller’s upcoming adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - and though it also employs an uncomplicated plot involving a hunt for an elusive photographer and a love story, this is a film with a universally understood core narrative. Simple as it may seem, though, 20th Century Fox has released an unheard of six-minute trailer so international audiences might grasp the story a bit better. That said, I can’t imagine anyone domestic or abroad actually watching this thing on purpose. It’s longer than some short films, for goodness’ sake!
The new trailer, which comes to us via The Playlist, hurdles over getting audiences interested in the movie and just draws out all of the story arcs that the other trailers hint at, and all in order. That said, it’s still a gorgeous and imaginative journey into the life of a nebbish introvert, with a scale that most films could only (day)dream of reaching.
In the film Walter works for LIFE Magazine as a photo developer, a job that may be in danger thanks to the company's transition to online publishing. His last big job includes tracking down a lost negative for an amazing photograph that will serve as the final issue’s cover. Unfortunately, the shot was taken by a constantly-moving, adventurous photographer played by Sean Penn. As if this global trek weren’t enough, Walter also wants to find love.
In addition to the trailer we also have a new clip, which you can watch below. It delves into footage mostly featured in the trailers and takes us into one of the film’s first imagination-laden sequences, as Walter silently moons over his coworker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig) - whom he assumes doesn’t even know he’s alive. And since we’re all aware that women swoon when ice-faced explorers burst from office walls, Walter drifts off into fantasyland - at least until a very pompous Adam Scott and his Velcro beard come in to interrupts everything.
While response to the film following its festival debut hasn’t been overwhelmingly positive, I’m still highly excited about checking it out once it hits theaters this Christmas assuming of course that there’s something else to see beyond everything shown in the six-minute trailer.
