The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) is not my favorite Danny Kaye movie — that would easily have to be The Court Jester (1956), which has long ranked as one of my top ten films of all time — but it’s one of several Kaye films that got played a lot at the Chattaway household when my siblings and I were growing up, and it’s one of several Kaye films that we quote in casual conversation all the time.
So it was with some apprehension that I greeted the news, back in March 2003, that Steven Spielberg was thinking of directing a remake of the film starring Jim Carrey. Well, now the Hollywood Reporter says the project has been handed over to Mark Waters, director of the two best Lindsay Lohan films to date — Freaky Friday and Mean Girls — and, uh, Owen Wilson.
From the over-the-top Carrey to the more laid-back Wilson? That suggests a radical rethinking of the project’s whole style and tone — and an even more radical departure from Kaye’s brand of comedy. Say what you will about Kaye or Carrey, but they at least share an ability to assume multiple personae, which is essential to this story of a daydreamer with an overactive imagination; it is not so clear what Wilson would do with this material.
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