Staggering landscapes, giant puppets, seamless computer effects and elaborate sets come together to create a completely unique vision, one that is drawn from Sendak’s iconic images and then goes farther, stranger. Max ends up running away, literally and into his own fantasy world – to where the wild things are. While I won’t give away the details, I will say that Max’s act of defiance involves far more than threatening to eat his mother up, which is what happens in the book. It all comes to a boil one evening at dinner. In science class, his teacher talks about the inevitable death of the sun. His older sister spends all her time with her friends. His single mom (Catherine Keener) seems to save her laughter for her boyfriend and her frowns of frustration for Max. Yet Where the Wild Things Are is mostly interested in the more complicated aspects of Max’s life. The film makes time for innocent moments, including a lovely, early sequence that captures the bliss of creating the perfect snow fort. We like to think of childhood as a time of innocence and simplicity, but an honest trip down memory lane reveals it wasn’t always like that. We eventually learn that Max can be sweet and has an astonishing imagination, but he’s also savage.ĭirected by Spike Jonze ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) and written by Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers (who is having a superb screenwriting year after previously working on Away We Go), Where the Wild Things Are is about the more difficult qualities of kids: their wildness, yes, but also their fearfulness, uncertainty and even cruelty. When we first meet Max (a fresh, unaffected Max Records), he’s wearing a ratty wolf suit, growling with a startling ferocity and chasing the family dog with a fork (the fork, the most troubling element, is taken directly from the book). This is quite unlike most children’s films, which prefer plucky orphans, good-hearted wallflowers or other sympathetic figures. Where the Wild Things Are gets one thing crucially right about the 1963 Maurice Sendak picture book on which it’s based: Max, the young hero, is not a nice kid.
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