Walter Mitty in 2013

While the 1947 movie has a gentler spirit, it is very much of the same world as the 1939 story. The jobs aren't that satisfying and the women are domineering.

It's interesting to me that the story is from before US involvement in WWII. A lot of that mindset fits well with the post-war America that saw the first movie. Women needed to be pushed back into being supportive homemakers rather than thinking that they can do anything. Also, Freud-inspired psychiatrists have fled Europe to the States, ready to blame everything on mothers who are either iceboxes or smotherers.

We should have grown beyond that by 2013. In some ways we did.

For 2013 Walter Mitty, the digital world is changing his job and leaving him behind. 

It's not quite the same issue as civilized modern life "emasculating" men (though that issue would still be perceived as a problem by some) and it is much more gender-neutral. If there is still gender bias in play, that's nothing new.

Walter's mother is moving into assisted living, and thus downsizing. This includes having to give up her piano.

He worries over it, and I have sympathy for that. There can be a lot of worry with aging parents. However, between his tendency to feel put upon and to escape it via daydreaming, he misses things like that his mother visited with the photographer that he is trying to track down.

Just to get to the end of it (and here's a spoiler): the reason Walter couldn't find the negative he needed was that the photographer had playfully put it in the photo part of the wallet he left as a gift. Frustrated, Walter had thrown out the wallet, but Mrs. Mitty retrieved the wallet. While Walter was worrying about the problems his mother posed to him, she had the solution to his problem all along.

That makes Walter sound kind of petulant and self-absorbed. He is, but it doesn't necessarily make him unlikable, either. He does care about people, but sometimes the fear or the desire to avoid the problems makes him retreat into his daydreams.

In this case, his loss of the photograph and attempts to recover it become the impetus to learning more about what he actually can do, including things he would not have guessed were options.

It's all right, but it didn't need to be that way. 

Working at Life and processing photos from a globe-trotting photographer, he could have been thinking about places he would like to see all along. He could have taken up an interest in photography or music or some other hobby that he would have enjoyed.

He could have asked the woman out, without trying to set it up through eHarmony.

He could have actively listened to his mother.

Life is hard, but there are things that make it better and things that make it worse. 

Honesty in assessing yourself, persistence in figuring out what you want, and then persistence but also flexibility in going after it... it's a good starting point.