The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Blu-Ray Review

If you know me then it’s no secret that I am not a fan of Ben Stiller. “Zoolander” was the dumbest movie I’ve ever not been able to sit through, “The Watch” and “Tower Heist” were severely disappointing, and Envy is probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen, period. There are a few of his movies I enjoyed, like “Dodgeball” and “Tropic Thunder”, but that’s mainly because he wasn’t the center of attention throughout the entire flick. So needless to say when we received a review copy of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” I wasn’t super excited to review it, but here we go.

In 1939 “The New Yorker” published a short story called “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” that featured a character that would get lost in his own head, as he went on a series of incredible adventures… in his mind. None of the adventures happen in real life, which this movie adaptation completely ditches in favor of making things more “realistic” in setting.

In the movie adaptation of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” there are some scenarios that play out in Walter’s head, mainly the plot lines revolving around his crush on a fellow coworker played by Kristin Wiig. Some of the scenarios are fun and nice to look at, but when combined with the main plot line, thing just kind of fall apart.

The main plot line of the flick follows Walter Mitty as he attempts to track down a photographer in order to obtain a photo negative to be used at “Life”, the magazine he works for. His bosses and everyone are on him to get the photo ready to be printed, yet the package that was supposed to contain the negatives, didn’t. And now that everyone in the office knows about the picture, he has to track it down.

I am glad that the movie isn’t your typical goofy Ben Stiller flick like all those ones I listed above that I hated, but I still didn’t think it was a great movie overall. It looked good and it was definitely entertaining for the most part, but there was just something about it that didn’t keep my undivided attention.

The video quality of this blu-ray is amazing. The scenery and visuals throughout Walter’s adventure translate nicely to the screen. And the audio isn’t too shabby either. Everything is crisp and clear, nothing is hard to understand, and the epicness of the adventure definitely comes through. There are super loud, booming effects and soundscapes and then there are small little details that make the audio on this blu-ray exceptional. Despite the movies shortcomings, the audio/visual aspect of the flick holds nothing back.

There are a decent number of special features on the blu-ray disc, but I’m not sure they warrant a purchase on their own. A few deleted scenes, a gallery of reference photography, a music video and, my favorite, a handful of behind-the-scenes featurettes. I did wish that the behind-the-scenes look was a bit more immersive and advanced, but I’ll take what I can get. The special features round out the disk nicely, but like I said, I would have liked a little more and I don’t think the blu-ray is worth buying for the special features alone.

Overall I can’t recommend purchasing this blu-ray, but if you’re interested in checking out the movie, please do so. The visuals are outstanding and the audio/visual aspect is damn near perfect. Ben Stiller doesn’t really play one of his stupid, slapstick-type characters, so that was a win for me.