Not Wild About These Wild Things
I’ve been having trouble figuring out what I wanted to say about director Spike Jonze’s (Being John Malkovich) adaptation of author Maurice Sendak’s children’s book Where the Wild Things Are. Beautifully realized, extremely well acted and full of unique sights and sounds worthy of the 1964 Caldecott Medal-winning source material the movie still left me dissatisfied, and walking out of the theatre I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been.
Max (Max Records) and Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) embark on an adventure in Warner Bros' Where the Wild Things Are
The problem for me is that the childlike imagination of the book, its brief journey of a young boy taking an inventive journey to an island populated by monsters only to become their leader before realizing instead of being king he’d rather remain a boy with a loving mom, just doesn’t suit itself to expansion. What works as a flight of fancy for 4 to 8 year olds doesn’t easily incorporate themes of isolation, loneliness and a longing for attention, and while those are feelings every child has felt I didn't care for them here.
In the film’s production notes the director comments that he set out not to make children’s movie but to instead craft a story about childhood, and while I think those feelings are laudable I do not think they actually come true. Jonze and Away We Go co-writer Dave Eggers’ script is so said, so melancholy, so full of pain and existential suffering I had trouble warming up to it. By the time it was over I was deeply unsatisfied, and while I did see glimmers of my own childhood here and there I didn’t see enough for the movie to win me over.
What I will say is that the look is extraordinary. More than that, the young child at the center, relative newcomer Max Records (he appears briefly at the start of The Brothers Bloom), is wonderful as precocious hero Max. Finally, the vocal work by veteran stars James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker, Paul Dano, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose is sublime, all of them disappearing into their creature creations so effortlessly I was suitably impressed.
The thing is, as good as all of these technical and performance aspects are the film itself is so frustratingly sad I kept feeling like the whole thing was drowning in a sea of negative emotions. Like his own home life, Max’s world of monsters is a dysfunctional broken mess in need of fixing. No one is getting along, few are being listened to, the threat of discord lingering over them all like a dagger waiting to fall.
I kept expecting Max to learn how to fix this, that he would discover that communication, acceptance and understanding mixed with a healthy dose of adult nurturing would lead him both to be able to repair these creatures to comfort as well as make him realize home with his own mom (Catherine Keener) was where he needed to be. But what I waited for, what I personally felt Sendak so poignantly hinted at in just ten lines of prose, never seemed came to fruition, and by the time the final scene in the film matched the last page of the book I sat in the theatre scratching my head.
And yet this movie still has me tied in an endless series of Gordian Knots so confusing I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get out of them. There are moments, blissful little bits of dreamy perfection, where my heart soared and my soul ached. Max and main monster Carol have a scene in a secluded desert hideaway that is remarkable, while a later one between the boy and pintsized goat creature Alexander might just be the film’s most heartfelt passage.
I also wasn’t exaggerating when I said the look is extraordinary. The creatures themselves feel like 21st Century versions of timeless puppet movie monsters like Falkor from The Neverending Story, Ludo from Labyrinth or the Mystics from The Dark Crystal. As a humongous fan of those classic family adventures I almost couldn’t believe what Jonze had done here, these ‘Wild Things’ so stupendously realized and going so far beyond anything done before I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Still, none of this changes the fact I think the director’s take on Sendak’s material simply doesn’t work. Visual wizardry and a few mesmerizing moments of emotional clarity only get you so far, the whole not coming close to justifying the means. Where the book is a children’s fable that continues to fascinate readers of all ages, Where the Wild Things Are the movie is a peculiar darkly adult travelogue into the id and, wild rumpus or no, I doubt I will return to it anytime soon.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
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