Tuesday’s Top Trailer: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Welcome to a weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Tuesday's Top Trailer. One of my favorite parts about going to see movies is the series of trailers that airs beforehand and, more often than not, the trailer is far better than the actual film. Each week, I'll be sharing a trailer I've recently seen. Please chime in with comments on what you think of the trailer and how you think the movie is going to be.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – Opening December 25, 2013

Fantasy is a fantastic genre, and when it’s blended with an utterly boring real life, it can be all the more fascinating. Ben Stiller has directed movies before – “Tropic Thunder,” “Zoolander,” “The Cable Guy,” and his debut, the more serious “Reality Bites.” This, however, is an abrupt departure from everything he’s done before. He was surprisingly good in a more mature role in Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg,” but here, he’s using the qualities that make him likeable but able to be taken seriously and taking them to a whole new level. The casting of other roles with actors like Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott indicates that this film must be playful to a degree, but having Sean Penn in a non-comic role suggests otherwise. What that should create is a marvelous hybrid of tones and moods to come together for an intoxicating and highly enjoyable film. It seems to me to be a combination of three different films: the reality-detached “The Science of Sleep,” the energetic excitement of a scavenger hunt in “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” and the road movie nature of something like “The Way” with Martin Sheen. Its Christmas release date means that someone has faith in this movie to be a true crowd pleaser, and I think it might straddle the lines between box-office success and critical acclaim, and despite some enormous delays on production, it might even appeal to a wide variety of audiences of all ages.