Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Film Review
Spike Jonze Makes A Children's Film For Sensitive College Kids
The 1963 children's book Where The Wild Things Are certainly posed a challenge to anyone looking to craft a full-length feature out of its thinly-worded bones. This source material - a quick, fun read - focuses on a rambunctious kid named Max who escapes supper-denying punishment through a brief jaunt in wild woods with a group of monsters giving life to his anger issues.
Not much fodder for an hour and a half feature movie, but film director and critical darling Spike Jonze (who was personally nominated for the project by the book's author Maurice Sendak) and Away We Go scribe Dave Eggers knocked ten meager sentences into a full screenplay. Populating their adaptation with a cast of wildly talented actors and inspired creature effects (courtesy of Jim Henson's studios), what could go wrong? Plenty.
Max Records Pushes Sadness To The Max
The fortuitously named Max Records is undeniably great as the film's lead character. But gone is the "wild thing" of the book, having been replaced by a troubled kid with deep seated emotional issues. He's not just angry here, but plagued by a wellspring of unbridled rage stemming from an inflated sense of isolation and abandonment.
Max's older sister chooses boys over hanging with her brother (understandably), and his single mother Connie (cast a bit obviously with Jonze fave Catherine Keener) is juggling her familial duties with excess work and a budding dating life. While she doesn't outright ignore her son, what little attention she does lavish on him is seen by Max as insufficient, so he goes ballistic before running away to catch a sailboat to elsewhere.
Maurice Sendak Defanged - Where The Mild Things Are
Max leads not just a lonely life, but an entirely depressing one. Even at school, all he learns is that the sun will eventually burn out. Not to worry though, as his teacher runs down a list of all the probable ways in which humanity will peter out long before such a cataclysmic event. So surely, any imaginative escape from this existence will be rife with joviality, playfulness and sunshine?
Instead, the toothy, gargantuan monsters Max encounters in his fantasy realm are manic depressives who would rather wallow in a bottomless miasma of sadness and despair than roar, romp and cuddle. When Max arrives on Suicide Watch Island, he meets Carol (James Gandolfini) - the surliest of the beasties who is on a hyperactive mission to destroy all of the creatures' twiggy homes. Max joins in, only to find himself on a potential dinner menu, and must talk fast to stay alive.
James Gandolfini And Co. - Tickle Me Emo And The Mope-ets
With his clever storytelling abilities and fascinating garb (he wears a ratty pair of wolf pajamas), Max soon captivates the fuzzy gaggle of sad sack monstrosities and becomes their "king". Only then are the individual creatures introduced to the audience, from the acerbic Judith (Catherine O'Hara) and her mate Ira (Forest Whitaker) to the demented looking, vaguely eagle-like Douglas (Chris Cooper). Curiously missing is the free-spirit KW (Lauren Ambrose), whose absence vexes Carol to no end.
While they may have some distinctive personality traits, the "things" all speak with a flat affect, as if heavily medicated. Numerous adventures are had, including pig-piles, rumpuses in the forest and a protracted segment of fort construction. However, there is rarely any real fun to be had in these moments, as all lightness exists only as a reminder that someone will soon get their feelings irreparably hurt. Max's sole talent seems to be at making an already intolerable existence that much more painful.
Spike Jonze Artfully Monsterizes A Children's Classic
There are a handful of positive attributes to the film, the spot-on realization of the monsters being a prime example. A mixture of traditional "guys in suits" work, animatronics and computer graphics, they perfectly straddle filmic photorealism and Sendak's heavily stylized illustration. The cinematography is likewise impressive, though its penchant for bleak, eternal sunsets feels as though it's pretentiously grabbing for the look of any given late-Sixties folk LP cover.
The cast (both voice and live-action) is a slam dunk, yet the copious pool of talent isn't capable of pulling this dreary, lugubrious art-film gone wrong from the quicksand. Jonze may have talent aplenty, but Being John Malkovich apparently didn't prepare him to make a movie for kids - or even for kids at heart. This is a picture for intellectuals and ennui-steeped hipsters. Listen closely and one can hear the roar of countless music acts with improbably long, abstract band names racing to make the first concept album based on this film.
The laudable messages of the original story are still present, and there are occasions when the movie captures the spirit of childhood playfulness. Unfortunately any such fleeting moment of levity is drowned in an emotionally numbing barrage of sadness, hopelessness and detachment. Imagine Jim Henson's Labyrinth (another film treading these same waters), yet utterly bereft of joy.
Rating: 4 out of 10
- Where The Wild Things Are
- Directed by Spike Jonze
- Written by Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers
- Adapted from the picture book by Maurice Sendak
- Starring Max Records, James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Catherine Keener, Forest Whitaker
- Running Time: 94 Minutes
Carol The Monster Shares His Ennui With Young Max
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