Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty: when will Ben start being funny again?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty may be a work of art or a classic short story. But, Ben Stiller is treating it like a Michael Bay treatment in this trailer for his upcoming remake of the Danny Kaye movie. Neither film has anything to do with James Thurber’s original short story as much as they like to think, but it doesn’t hurt to pretend that they do.

Walter Mitty, in the literature version of his story, has five daydreams as he drives his wife into town for a hairdressing appointment. Danny Kaye’s movie kind of kept to the same theme but it was a showcase of Kaye’s extraordinary abilities as a comic, mimic and slapstick artist.

Ben Stiller’s upcoming version looks way too expensive for this kind of intimate story, and it is no Zoolander. Please, Ben, get back to doing funny and stop trying to make up for Cable Guy. Cable Guy was weird. It didn’t work on any level. It was way too expensive. Sound familiar?