Where the Wild Things Are Review

“Where the Wild Things Are” is one of the oddest, most visually-impressive and emotional movies I’ve seen in recent years.

But I honestly COMPLETELY understand if you see it and absolutely hate it.

Director Spike Jonze (“Being John Malkovich”, “Adaptation”) and writer Dave Eggers (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”) have adapted Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book and the results are predictably (and delightfully) unconventional.

Seeing as how the original book only had around 10 sentences of text, Jonze and Eggers had their work cut out for them.

The movie follows Max (Max Records), an energetic and mischievous boy who escapes his lonely home life by boarding a small boat and traveling to an island inhabited by gigantic and neurotic creatures who soon crown him as their king.

I’ve never read the book, but I imagine Jonze and Eggers took the biggest liberties in their characterizations of each of the Wild Things.

Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) is excitable, prone to violent temper tantrums and desperately wants his group to stay together. Douglas (voiced by Chris Cooper) does pretty much what Carol says. Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) is perpetually skeptical and sarcastic, while her companion Ira (voiced by Forest Whitaker) is really good at making holes. Finally, there’s Alexander (voiced by Paul Dano) feels like no one ever listens to what he has to say. Then there’s KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose), who is warm and tender to Max, but seems ready to break away from the group.

I don’t necessarily buy all the talk going around that Jonze has made a children’s movie “for adults.” As far as I’m concerned, he’s simply made a movie that doesn’t talk down to children. Sure, the movie can be slow at times and certain ideas will float right over the heads of most young children (do the Wild Things represent different parts of Max’s personality or the different people in his life?), but the filmmaker’s vision of childhood feels honest.

Whereas most kids’ programming comes packaged with a life lesson and a happy ending, this movie is not afraid to depict the scariness and sadness of being a kid.

I actually thought the brief early scenes of Max in the real world were just as effective as his adventures with the Wild Things. Catherine Keener is great as Max’s caring, overworked single mom, and Mark Ruffalo pops up for an effective cameo as a smiling, barely-patient boyfriend.

Still, the star of the show is Max Records, who gives a terrific, exceptional performance as Max. The boy is no saint. In fact, Max is a downright terror (in that way little kids can be) in the sequence right before he escapes into his own imagination while wearing his wolf costume. Yet Records pulls us in by conveying the sadness and lack of fulfillment the character feels from his home life and the joy and uneasiness of the new world he discovers. Records is so good, he makes some of the movie’s more indulgent and confusing sequences more than tolerable.

The other stars of the show are the Wild Things themselves, or rather the seamless blend of live-action costumes and special effects that went into creating the expressive creatures. Sendak was right in insisting that Jonze — creator of some of the most visually-memorable movies and music videos of the past decade and a half — be the director to adapt his book. Jonze believably creates a stunning environment that people who smoke weed will be enjoying for years to come. (Especially on Blu-Ray.)

I also thought O’Hara and Dano were great in their beastly/neurotic roles. Gandolfini was also very good, but every time Carol spoke, I heard Tony Soprano. Sorry.

Overall, “Where the Wild Things Are” is both a challenging movie and readily accessible to anyone who actively uses his or her imagination. Then again, not everyone goes to the movies to see a slow-moving, challenging ode to childhood, so I completely understand if you hated it.

I kinda liked it.

Where the Wild Things Are…B+