Understated is the key word here, and this modern take on the Walter Mitty short story takes the basic premise and then smartly extrapolates in the opposite direction in Steve Conrad's clever and delightful script. Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig give wonderfully low-key and sincere performances to these seemingly small and ordinary characters, and it is a joy watching Stiller's Mitty emerge from his negative-cutting vault to meet with the wider world in extraordinary ways and Wiig's fragile single mother taking the first tentative steps from a broken relationship into a new romance. Cinematography is glorious throughout, and the well-chosen uplifting indie-rock soundtrack makes the middle-age-crisis angle play wider, even if giving the film the feel of a high-end consumer product commercial at times. As Mitty's wild flights of fancy (allowing the filmmakers to play with a variety of genres successfully) give way to the wonders of the real world, the beautifully focused-down ending makes this a wonderfully life-affirming tale that for the most part avoids the saccharine and heavy-handed approach of a Forrest Gump for something more universal and identifiable for the audience,
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