Where the Wild Things Are B

In theatres, PG, 101 minutes

There’s a lot of love out there for this movie, and I get why. Start with a children’s book that everyone suddenly remembers (and remembers loving), mix in the hipster dream team of director Spike Jonze (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and writer Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), and add a sterling cast and visuals that consistently amaze, and it’s easy to get enraptured—with the trailer, at least.


Let’s start with what the movie isn’t. It’s not a kids’ movie, although kids may love it. This is the reverse of the book, which definitely is a kids’ book (that adults love). What this movie gets right: Childhood. It nails being a kid. Elevenish-year-old Max, played by a startling Max Records, is a volcanic mixture of joy, anger, frustration, fear, tenderness, and exhuberance. It’s a testament to Jonze, Eggers, and Records that you feel like you know Max’s big sister Claire even though she’s rarely on the screen. Claire has reached early adolescence and is no longer interested in the imaginary world of Max. But, of course, Max can’t understand this and wants her acceptance and friendship. Meanwhile, his single mother, the always great and sexier by the day Catherine Keener, is struggling in her job, trying to be a good mother to Max, and trying to date (Mark Ruffalo, great in little more than a cameo). Dad appears to be M.I.A. The situation is of a little boy whose world has been ripped out from under him, so he acts out—first destroying his sister’s room, then, when dressed in his wolf (I think) outfit, biting his mother—before running away from home to where the wild things are.

The wild things, seamless mixtures of 8-foot puppets and CGI faces, are perfectly realized adaptations of the figures from the book. At first they try to eat Max, then they make him their king. Max is particularly close to James Gandolfini’s Carol, a creative, energetic, destructive monster that the others both recognize as intelligent and tire of dealing with. Each of the other monsters represent aspects of Max’s self or situation in life. The world of the wild things is wonderful and as mercurial as a boy’s imagination, with cliffs for climbing, oceans of water, sand dunes, forests, and massive forts of sticks. The camera work and visuals are breath-taking while never seeming over done. Like the book, Jonze portrays all this from the child’s perspective, with glaring inconsistencies noticed by no one and real danger around every corner. And, like the book, childhood isn’t glossed over as one long happy moment, but as a time of heart-breaking highs and lows, often juxtaposed in rapid succession.

As much as there was to love about this movie, and let me tell you as a boy who grew up with three sisters, I heavily identified with Max’s feelings of isolation and love-hatred for siblings, I didn’t love it. The middle section, as breath-taking as it was, feels ultimately like one long counseling session with no real resolution. Max eventually misses his family and goes back home, but he still doesn’t have a father, and he’s still a ball of emotions and feelings he can’t understand. There is no real breakthrough for him because, well, he’s eleven. I’ll give Eggers and Jonze props for not taking the easy way out and pretending like everything’s better at the end. Still, a pitch-perfect psychological exploration of childhood with no resolution can only be so entertaining. B, although may move to a B+. May work better for those with children. I’d be interested to hear Doctor or Lawyer’s thoughts.

On a side note, great to see Jonze back in action. His style is evident everywhere. The person I was with, unaware who Spike Jonze was, commented that the movie reminded her of Eternal Sunshine.