Spike Jonze’s long delayed adaptation of the beloved novel Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak finally has hit the screens and the results are more or less wonderful on every level.
Our hero is Max, a young nine year old with a wild side that can emerge from his everyday child hood demeanor when his buttons get pushed a little too far. In fact, it doesn’t take much pressure to set the kid off and when Max and his mother get into when she has a gentleman caller over, Max runs out of the house and sails of to a foreign land inhabited by a group of giant monster like wild things. Max quickly becomes anointed their king with promises to bring changes and happiness to their land.
That’s right, happiness, and I think you will quickly find that this film isn’t the fun filled adventure the trailers are selling it as. The wild things are not a happy race of creatures and their defacto leader, Carol, is riding an emotional roller coaster over the course of the film. Elated one minute, angry the next, and moping around depressed the next, Carol, is a fairly diverse and complicated character that is much unexpected for a film for younger audiences. In fact, outside Ira, most of the wild things are grappling with some kind of emotional distress and Max does his best to try and address everyone’s issues though very little is resolved over the course of the film. [Read more...]