“In an era of cookie-cutter movies, each tailored to a one-word genre, it’s actually a little stirring to encounter a project so deeply mired in an identity crisis.

“Ben Stiller’s latest directorial exercise looks a little like a romantic comedy: the comic plays a lonely drone much in love with new colleague Kristen Wiig.

“The film has something of the sentimental “you can do it” drama about it. At times it turns positively arty. You certainly couldn’t say that it was cynically honed for a target demographic.

“Among the few things the film can’t claim to be is any meaningful version of James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (or the 1947 Danny Kaye film it inspired).

“That brief tale followed a hen-pecked man as, seeking escape from humdrum reality, he imagined himself a hydroplane captain, a top surgeon and the witness in a murder case. ” – IrishTimes.com