Ben Stiller's 'Walter Mitty' gets lost in his dreams - Boston Herald

“THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY” Rated PG. At AMC Loews Boston Common, Regal Fenway Stadium and suburban theaters. Grade: B-

This new, uninspired take on “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” from director-star Ben Stiller is not going to make anyone forget the great 1947 Sam Goldwyn-produced, box-office smash hit with the great Danny Kaye in the title role.

Stiller’s Gen Y boy-man Walter is a dull, drawn-looking garden gnome compared to Kaye’s antic, ginger-haired post-World War II Manhattan pulp-fiction publisher-fantasist. In this version, Walter works in New York City for Life magazine, which is in the process of being downsized by evil corporate raiders, led by a loathsome suit named Ted (Adam Scott). Walter lives on his own, and his mother (the great Shirley MacLaine) no longer henpecks him.

Walter is in charge of receiving and cataloging negatives, and he has just received the latest from the legendary Life photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn with perilously blackened hair and goatee), a Bear Grylls-type adventurer on the trail of a snow leopard. An O’Connell slide destined for the last front page of the final Life print edition is missing, and timid dreamer Walter must find it.

The trouble is no one knows where globe-trotting Sean is and among the only clues to his whereabouts are the other slides, including an image of a thumb and a weirdly sculptural image.

The new plot by screenwriter Steve Conrad (“The Weather Man”) also features a Stretch Armstrong doll, more ironic beards than I cared to have to look at, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” lots of product placements, a volcano in Iceland, a “Benjamin Button” reference and Kristen Wiig as Walter’s co-worker Cheryl, the guitar-strumming girl of lonely Walter’s dreams.

If you are a fan of corporate pop that sounds like it may have already been used in a TV commercial, you are in luck. If not, my deepest, sonic apologies. In an utterly gratuitous and unimaginative scene, Walter battles Ted, “Avengers”-style, on skateboards, wrecking Manhattan, again.

Stiller’s daydreaming milquetoast is a loser except for his aforementioned skateboard skills, which he demonstrates in Central Park for Cheryl’s young son Rich (Marcus Antturi) and which serve him well later. On his globe-hopping, transformative quest to find Sean, Walter has a memorable encounter with a drunken helicopter pilot (Olafur Darri Olafsson) in Greenland, the best scene in the film.

Beautifully shot by Stuart Dryburgh (“The Painted Veil”), this “Walter Mitty” often seems more like a commercial for itself than a movie.

(“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” contains violence and crude language.)