With 2014 around the corner, actor/director Ben Stiller wants audiences to wake up, chase your dreams and take life by the horns -- and begin this by going on an adventure with him in his latest film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The "adventure/fantasy/comedy-drama," directed by and starring Stiller, is the second film adaptation of James Thurber's 1939 short story of the same name. The family-friendly, $90 million epic opened on Christmas Day and received mixed reviews.

"Stiller and (Steven) Conrad's Mitty is a sharp departure from the 1947 film, and Thurber's short story, in that it features fewer daydreams -- this Walter Mitty begins to have his own real-life adventures," according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

In the film, Stiller plays Mitty as "an absent-minded, socially awkward nebbish who works in the photo department at LIFE magazine." The irony, of course, is that even though he works at a place called LIFE, he hasn't lived.

"Instead, he retreats into his head and imagines himself a dashing mountain climber or a hot-blooded Casanova. Stiller and screenwriter Steven Conrad have given Thurber's story a 21st-century twist by setting the film in our era of corporate downsizing. LIFE is about to cease publishing, and for its final cover the editors have chosen a shot from their globe-trotting photojournalist star, Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn). Then Mitty misplaces the negative. And with the encouragement of a co-worker he's sweet on (Kristen Wiig), he embarks on a quest to find O'Connell, leading him to Greenland and the Himalayas," according to Entertainment Weekly.

In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Witty "crisscrosses the planet," and "slowly transforms into the action hero he's always been in his fantasies." Witty evolves into an adventurer by skateboarding away from an erupting volcano and fighting off a great white shark, yet there is an emotional component to the film. There is also an emphasis on "acting out our dreams," which is relevant as we are about to ring in the New Year and begin thinking about New Year's resolutions. 

Acting out our dreams, adventure and fantasy, and escapism have been common themes in Latin books and films.

In history, we've seen fantasy mix with reality in Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece, "Don Quixote," where "Alonso Quijano, who reads so many chivalric novels that he decides to set out to revive chivalry, under the name Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer,Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthly wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood." While no one is battling windmills in Stiller's film, the there are elements of daydreaming and adventure that stem from the mind.

In the film, Stiller's character also fantasizes that he's a "hot-blood Casanova." The allure of a Casanova and fantasy versus reality is captured in the legend of Don Juan, told by Lord Byron. In 1995's "Don Juan DeMarco,"a romantic comedy-drama film, stars Johnny Depp as John Arnold DeMarco, a man who believes himself to be Don Juan, the greatest lover in the world.

"DeMarco (Depp) dons a cape and domino mask undergoes psychiatric treatment with Marlon Brando's character, Dr. Jack Mickler, to cure him of his apparent delusion. But the psychiatric sessions have an unexpected effect on the psychiatric staff, some of whom find themselves inspired by DeMarco's delusion; the most profoundly affected is Dr. Mickler himself, who rekindles the romance in his complacent marriage."

Again, Mitty (Stiller) won't be donning a cape or a mask, but his character will explore another side of himself in the hopes of finding a better version, a more adventurous version that takes risks in life and in love. Ready for your own adventure in 2014?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 5, 2013, it hit theaters on Dec. 25.

Check out the trailer: