The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

James Thurber was one of the great American humorists, and in 1939 he wrote a lovely two-page, 2100-word story in The New Yorker entitled The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Most recently, the title has been co-opted for a film starring Ben Stiller, which is connected to the story only by the title character having daydreams. In the film, our Walter Mitty is in charge of the photo department at Life magazine, and is unable to find a critical negative from the star photographer on the staff. This allows him to stop daydreaming and start going out on real adventures in search of the photographer so he can ask where the negative is. In the process, he gets the help of the girl he's admired from afar. Once we get past the conceit of Mitty's daydreams the action can actually take off, and it becomes a very sweet movie, with some breathtaking photography.