Arthouse cinema for the young and those who remember youth.
Going Rate: Worth a full-priced admission. Too deep for very young children but fine for teens and tweens.
Starring: Max Records, Voices Of James Gandofini, Benecio Del Toro, Forest Whitaker
Rated: PG (could actually be a hard G)
Red Flags: Some fantasy violence and childhood rough-housing, one mild curse word
Director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) immediately gets props for keeping Maurice Sendak's classic children's book from degrading into another hyperactive CGI kid flick. Where The Wild Things Are is a dark H.R. Pufnstuf, embodying childhood angst and imagination while retaining some warmth. And yes, it is wild, just like its protagonist Max (Records) -- a 9-year-old prone to fits of fatastical acting up -- as he tries to create the world of his dreams in a fantasy land inhabited by giant furry creatures.
Max is struggling for control in his life, absent a father at home and a mother preoccupied with work and a boyfriend. He gets into a snowball fight with his sisters' friends, who destroy Max's igloo and part of his soul with it. Then he learns at school that the sun will eventually burn itself out -- not in his lifetime, of course, but that's a point never made clear. Mom has time to sip wine with her boyfriend and serve frozen corn, but not to see a fort Max has constructed in his room, which eventually leads to an outburst. Max runs off into the night wearing some sort of animal suit with whiskers. He dashes into the woods and finds, likely in his imagination, a boat which takes him to an island inhabited by the aforementioned creatures.
They are a grumpy lot, a bunch of aimless, oversized dwarfs badly in need of a Snow White, or at least a few meds. Max steps in, and before anybody can eat him, he claims he has all sorts of powers and abilities. The Wild Things' de facto leader, Carol (Gandofini, still giving off that Tony Soprano vibe), quickly takes a liking to the boy and crowns him king. The coronation ceremony consists of running wild in the forest until everybody's out of breath and sleeping in a gigantic pile.
"This is all yours," Carol says to the boy. "You're the owner of this world."
Carol shows Max his plan for a huge city. Max counters with a vision of a huge fort and underground tunnels with some sort of lookout post and "our own detective agency." Actually it looks like an gigantic wasps' nest made out of twigs, but that's not really important. At first, construction hums along as the boy and the beasts feel empowered and part of something huge. But then cracks start to show, as egos and feelings collide. Max comes to realize building the perfect world isn't as easy as Walt Disney's mantra: "If you can dream it, you can do it."
All of the Wild Things in this film were designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop and polished with CGI to help their expressions. You know people are inside of the costumes, even though they look so real. That's exactly Jonze's point: the wildness of our imaginations are still tethered to humanity, because we're thinking as humans, not animals. Max can conjure up big furry monsters, but they're just hairy grown-ups, occupied with faults and feelings and frailties. If it's hard being a kid, being a grown-up isn't any easier.
Director Jonze and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers have greatly expanded upon Sendak's book while staying respectful to it (Sendak is also one of the film's producers). At times, the picture lacks velocity, but you can say the same thing about Max. It's not a kids' movie, or even a family film, as much as a film about childhood imagination.
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