Movie Review - Where the Wild Things Are

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Director Spike Jonze has been tasked the unenviable undertaking of adapting Where the Wild Things Are, one of the most beloved children’s books of all time.  The book, for those of you unfamiliar, is about a boy named Max (Max Records) who, after being sent to his room for misbehaving, escapes his punishment by creating a wild world of monsters and adventure within his mind.  It’s beautifully illustrated and, for a filmmaker, frighteningly short.  Clocking in at a mere 10 sentences, it doesn’t give Jonze much to work with but he finds in roads by expanding Max’s back story.  The book revealed only that Max had a mother.  In the film we discover that Max’s mother (Catherine Keener) is divorced and attempting to date again.  His sister Claire (Pepita Emmerichs) is a teenager and, as such, not concerned with the world of little boys. 

Max is a solitary child, not out of neglect but necessity.  He’s being raised by a single-mom and has a sister that is more interested in boys than she is in brothers.  As the film opens, we see Max playing alone in the snow.  He’s building a fort and preparing for a snowball fight against an imaginary enemy.  When he sees Claire leaving with her friends, he pelts them with snow.  Much to Max’s surprise, her friends respond in kind and an ebullient ode to winter fun begins.  It’s refreshing to see a film portray teenage boys as something other than mean-spirited toward younger children.  But they play a little rougher than Max is prepared for; destroying his snow fort in the process.  Max, in a fit of petulant rage reciprocates by trashing his sister’s room thereby establishing that Max is more than a lonely child, he’s also an ill-tempered one.  After a second temper-tantrum, this time directed at his mother, he flees his home.  After running out in the world, he becomes lost in a world that’s increasingly wilderness, eventually finding himself in a world of monsters.

The film wisely rejects the world of CGI (with the exception of extraordinarily well-rendered facial expressions).  Instead it gives us giant puppets courtesy of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop; each creature seemingly representing either a family member or a facet of Max’s personality.  Carol (James Gandolfini) is moody, Alexander (Paul Dano) always feels unheard and KW (Lauren Ambrose) is a gentle and accepting female figure.  The film makes great use of muted colors to show us how drab the real world is.  Interestingly, Jonze never expands his palette once he reaches the world of wild things.  In an effort to protect himself from the monsters Max convinces them that he is their king.  It’s a ruse that fools some more than others, though all play along.  As fantastical as this new world is, in its own way, it’s every bit as drab as the one from which Max is running.  It’s a fascinating metaphor, but this is also where the film starts to bog down.

Unfortunately, once the film introduces the “wild things” there isn’t much in the way of story.  There is the requisite tension regarding if/when they’ll figure out Max is bluffing about his royalty but beyond that, there’s not much going on.  The film swiftly devolves into scenes of horseplay and roughhousing that, though beautiful to watch, quickly become repetitious.  The whole thing ironically gets bogged-down in a complete and utter lack of anything to get bogged-down in. 

The film’s broader themes, while not inappropriate for children, will most likely be lost them.  The movie is a contemplation of both the joys of childhood and what an oddly solitary experience it can be.  However, it is full of striking imagery.  And the performances (both the voice work and the puppeteers) are wonderful.  But the story never moves forward and essentially amounts to nothing more than: he runs away, he plays with monsters, he comes home.  Paradoxically, for all of the footage of kids and monsters at play, it’s weirdly downhearted with an overarching sense of whimsical melancholy. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being The Red Balloon and 1 being New Zoo Revue, Where the Wild Things Are gets a 7.

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