The unlikeliest movie not to have seen

I'm not talking about the movie I'm most embarrassed not to have seen. I've had a clear answer for that over the years, but I don't really have one now. Informally, it might be the original King Kong, but there's likely something that deserves the honor more than that.

No, I'm talking about the movie it seemed most likely I would see in the theater, or at least very soon after that, but never did.

That's Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, as you can see from the poster.

It seems almost incomprehensible that it's taken me nearly five years since it was released in 2013 to see it. But them's the facts.

Why is it so unlikely I wouldn't have seen it before now?

1. I really like Ben Stiller as a director. The Cable Guy is among my favorite films all time, full stop, and I also really really like Reality Bites, Zoolander and Tropic Thunder. In fact, he has yet to direct a film that hasn't worked for me, as I was even pretty positive on Zoolander 2. (Though his directing page on IMDB really needs to be updated -- he's got a 2007 movie known only as Untitled Christine Taylor Project that I kinnnnda don't think is going to still come out.)

2. I really like any movie that appears to be "Kaufman-esque." The Secret Life of Walter Mitty really looks like something Charlie Kaufman could have written, and reminds me of other movies that are more directly indebted to Kaufman, like The Science of Sleep and Stranger Than Fiction. I have a boundless optimism about the quality of such movies and always prioritize seeing them in time to rank them in the year of their release. Present company excluded, I guess.

3. It was released in time for me to see it before my ranking deadline that year. That's not always a given in Australia with late-year releases that have awards ambitions, some of which don't come out until February, well after I've closed off my rankings around the 20th of January. But this one came out on Boxing Day in 2013, giving me nearly a month to grab it before that deadline.

4. I also heard it was good. Early buzz was that it wasn't, but then after it actually got released, I heard nothing but good things. So skipping it was not even a decision motivated by having better uses of my time.

So why did I skip it?

Well, I did have better uses of my time.

December 26, 2013 -- its release date -- was just under a week before my younger son was born on January 1st. I had bigger fish to fry. Well, smaller fish, I guess.

I did see one movie in the theater that week between Christmas and New Year's, but it was The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which actually is my least favorite of those six movies. So I would have been better served on Walter Mitty. Then on December 31st they wanted to induce my wife, and for a while we didn't know whether my son was going to be born in 2013 or 2014 (or even, at that time, that he was a son).

It's not like I didn't get out to the theater again after that, though I made only three more theatrical visits before my deadline, one of which (Frozen) had the benefit of being able to get the older son out of the house with me. It was actually only two visits, since my wife also consented to a double feature of two must-haves just before my ranking deadline: Inside Llewyn Davis and Her. Llewyn Davis actually ended up at #3 for the year, and would have been higher if I were doing those rankings today.

What can I say. When you've got a new baby in the house, there are sacrifices that must be made.

So, no room for Walter Mitty, even though it was directed by Ben Stiller, was Kaufmanesque, was released in time and was supposed to be good.

The reason I'm telling you all this is that I have finally corrected this oversight ... though it took some rather unusual circumstances to do it.

Ever since I skipped Walter Mitty that year, I've had my eye open for easy opportunities to see it. But in that whole time, I didn't once see it available on a streaming service or to borrow from the library. It's the kind of movie that would have made my hand leap forward with extra urgency to pull it off the shelf, but it never appeared on any shelf that I saw. Oh yeah, I could have rented it from iTunes, and our neighborhood video store was actually still open then. But after the time of its greatest relevance to me -- pre-ranking deadline -- had passed, I guess I just decided to watch it whenever my first free opportunity arose.

And that never did actually happen.

When I finally acquired The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, it was as a purchase at a used video store. Which is particularly unusual because I almost never buy movies I haven't seen. In fact, I cannot immediately think of another instance of that happening.

You may remember the video store I discussed in this post, where the shelves are full of stacks of undifferentiated movies, and the store's owner had a look on his face like he was going to go out of business any day now. To contribute my small little share to preventing that from happening, I made a conscious decision last weekend to take my kids and buy a bunch of titles for both them and me. We spent $60 and came away with about two books (they also sell books and CDs) and about ten movies, one of which was Walter Mitty. It was never going to show up for free, it appeared.

The owner actually seemed profoundly grateful. I couldn't tell if he remembered me from the last time we came in and I briefly commiserated with him about his dwindling customer base, or if he was just grateful in isolation. But I hope the mere act of someone spending $60 in one fell swoop will convince him he still does have enough customers to stay open.

Anyway, that lined me up to finally, finally, FINALLY watch the movie Saturday night.

It did not disappoint. The Kaufman comparisons were correct, though I like it better than either of those movies mentioned above. It's no genuine Kaufman -- Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine and Synecdoche, NY are all better films -- but it's near the tops among "Kaufman imitators," if that doesn't sound like a backhanded compliment. I was toying with whether to give if four or 4.5 stars, and ultimately went with the latter.

I was also really impressed by the actual direction of the film. However well Stiller had done in the films he's directed previously, they are all comedies that feel scaled a bit smaller, which suggested a certain comfort zone. This one paints on a much bigger canvas, and paints exceedingly well, as it looks fantastic (thanks also to DP Stuart Dryburgh) and also has a lot of far-flung locations, including Greenland and Iceland. Much as I like him, I thought this would have been beyond Stiller. It totally isn't, and it makes me kind of sad that he had to follow this up with Zoolander 2 (even though I like that movie). I hope he gets a chance to do something on this scale again.

I also really liked how the film functions as a love letter to print journalism, of which I am refugee. The film is centered around the end of Life as a print magazine, something that actually occurred long before 2013, but which feels forever current in an age of ever-dwindling readership of, and publication of, print media. It lends an additional poignancy to the material that lingered with me, and does still.

So going from not having seen it to owning it is a positive development. I'll be eager to see it again.