Seven monsters, picked to live in a fort, and have their rumpus taped.

We all know the first rule about watching a movie based on a book:
Don’t expect the movie to resemble the book. But, you know what? Fuck
that. Certain themes are of essence to a story. If, say, the on-screen
hobbits in The Lord of the Rings were sullen,
despondent nomads of the desert, you’d punch Peter Jackson in the
throat. Likewise, if you read Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild
Things Are, you’d rightly expect the movie’s leading beasts to be,
well, wild creatures having some pretty wild times.

Don’t expect that.

Sendak’s 1963 illustrated kids’ book is a scant nine sentences long.
So there’s brilliance by screenwriter Dave Eggers in spinning that thin
fiber into a feature-length sweater. The book concerns Max, a
tyrannical shit of a kid, charging around the house in a wolf suit
until his mother imprisons him in his bedroom without dinner. A forest
grows around Max and he winds up [spoiler alert —Eds.]
where the Wild Things are. They “roared their terrible roars and
gnashed their terrible teeth,” Sendak writes, but Max tames the Wild
Things “by staring into their yellow eyes without blinking once.” They
crown him king, and all embark on a wild rumpus under the moon. From
there, any adventure is possible.

But while the original tale is anchored in a fantastic
adventure—and the implication of a world of wildness beyond
imagination, where anger and confidence reign—the screen quickly
shatters your dreams. Rather than speaking in grumbles and roars, the
Wild Things speak in prime-time cartoon voices, with a familiar
sitcommy lilt.

And rather than fearless yet sociable beasts, the Wild Things take
on the characteristics of Max’s emotions and fractured family: an
overworked single mom, an awkward boy, and a teenage sister outgrowing
her kid brother’s antics. The beasts still have terrible teeth and
claws—and the animapuppemagic of the Things is utterly
convincing—but they are jealous, petty, insecure,
passive-aggressive things. Not wild things.

In short: You go in expecting The Neverending Story, but
you end up with Dr. Phil. There are no luck dragons; there are
only difficult family times.

Some credit is due for this counterintuitive take—because of
course you’re expecting them to be so wiiiiiild—but I’ve
had it with counterintuitive. Moreover, a drama based on metaphors for
family tension falls flat in a kids’ movie. Themes of trust and
betrayal are nuanced adult concepts, but they get dumbed down for the
youthful audience who will fill the theater seats. It’s not a betrayal
of Sendak, either. He reportedly reached out for director Spike Jonze,
of Being John Malkovich fame.

But the pair colluded on a simplistic story. The plot is tugged not
by a menace, a mission, or a challenge, but instead Max and the Wild
Things meandering through their struggle to avoid loneliness. To find a
sense of place.

(A quick aside: People Having a Hard Time in Life is the dullest of
all movie plots, which includes but is not limited to Having a Hard
Time with Friends, Having a Hard Time with a Job, Having a Hard Time
with a Lover, Having a Hard Time with Oneself, and Having a Hard Time
with Your Family. Covering characters in fur and talons doesn’t
substantially change this hackneyed cinematic staple.)

None of this is to say that Where the Wild Things Are is
anything short of a visual triumph. The giant eagle that walks
upright—and has a detachable wing—and the horned beast with
flower-power hair and feathered legs move exactly the way you’d imagine
a 600-pound creature would move. And the fort they share makes you pine
to build a tree house the size of an ark. There are, of course, a
handful of wild moments and funny quips (“You’re the first king we
haven’t eaten”).

But what could have been an epic—
using the framework that
inspired a fantastic place—instead became Max living out the
ultimate manifestation of insecurity. At one point they actually fight
over which guests are invited over to the house. It’s another mundane
story of people having a hard time in life. And lots of movies dwell on
hardship. Our stories of shared fantasy are few and far between, and
this fantasy was squandered. recommended

57 replies on “From Wild to Mild”

  2. …. So instead of getting points for doing something new for a kid’s movie, it loses points for not being more like an extremely CLICHED kid’s movie, whose main theme was to Belive In Yourself and Beating Up Bullies Is Awesome And Totally Okay.

    Right. Just checking.

  3. Wow, what a surprise! Yet another condescending and obnoxious movie review from the stranger. If you all hate pretty much every movie that is made why bother even reviewing any of them. I feel like a sucker every time for actually reading this garbage. Especially when Im obviously a fool for think something actually looks interesting. Thanks. Maybe you could try to lighten the fuck up.

  4. lindy and jen grave’s reviews are cool, even if i dont agree with them sometimes. graves review of the film the hunger is still one of my faves. i also like constant’s reviews from time to time, but i dont know why the stranger lets everyone on their staff review films. holden is a cranky news guy not a film critic. go see this film.

  5. wow man, this review is a piece of shit. you sound like a fucking retard comparing this to dr. phil. did you even fucking watch the movie. and your comment about “People Having a Hard Time in Life” is a load of this. tons of amazing movies had that same kinda theme. look at citizen kane you fuck. grow up and stop being so angry/upset with everything. its a fucking kids movie.

  6. Chill out, guys. A critic is someone paid to offer a subjective opinion, ostensibly based on how well he or she writes about it.

    What I find interesting is that both the positive reviews and negative reviews say pretty much the same things–that the beasts are melancholic, the tone of the film hyper-emotional. If you’re the sort of person who remembers childhood as being sort of empty and sad, if you’ve ever defended Morrissey’s solo work, if you’re the sort who cried every time the Arcade Fire song in the previews hit the big, Hallelujah chorus (don’t look at me like that) . . . you’ll probably enjoy the film (or so I’m hoping). Sendak apparently encouraged Jonze and Eggers to turn what had been his therapeutic journey in their own; my guess is that the tone to which people object simply reflects their doing what they were invited to do.

    Acknowledging that Jonze directed a visual tour de force is not an insignificant bone to toss at the picture, given that fantasy cinema often succeeds or fails on its visuals; fans of more “analogue” visual stylings, and of Jonze’s surreal compositions past, will likely be well-served.

    I’m cautious, but hopeful.

  7. Ugh. Being that I haven’t actually seen the film yet, I can’t comment about the actual film. But I will comment on the review.

    First, the reviewer is a cynical, relentlessly pessimistic dolt. Why is it that 80% of everything reviewed by anyone at The Stranger is a rant about how lame and uncool said thing is? You guys work for a great paper; why are you all so pissed off and negative ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Can nothing have inherent beauty and be original? Geez.

    Second, the book wasn’t a rousing adventure. It was muted and strange and creepy. The wild things looked at Max in very strange ways, and the story didn’t really go anywhere. It sounds like the tone of the film matched the book perfectly, even if the expanded story didn’t go where the reviewer wanted it to.

    Third, I’ve been waiting for a ‘kid’s movie’ to tackle realisic ‘kid’s’ emotions ever since E.T. I want a ‘kid’s’ movie that is as much for adults as it is for the little ones. I want a ‘kid’s’ movie that will make me FEEL something other than sick that I wasted my $15 on effects with no soul behind them. Seems like this film goes there. I can’t wait to see it.

  8. I could not agree more! Thanks for giving an honest review of this movie, rather than stroking Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers. This movie was absolutely awful, an hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back! If you say you liked it, you’re a liar!

  9. Wow! Dave Eggers writing a story where the real world comes along and give’s a young kid a hard time? Say it ain’t so! Same old song, I’m afraid.

  10. @8 I saw the movie on Monday and adored it. I am also not a liar, but you’ll need a double of me who always lies, not to mention two doorways of which one is safe and one leads to certain death, and a very clever single question, to determine for yourself whether or not a critical perspective that differs from your own is legit.

  11. I often roll my eyes at Stranger film reviews because the reviewers often come off as pretentious a-holes who have a hard time enjoying anything. That said, I couldn’t agree more with Holden’s opinion about why this film will be disappointing for some viewers. I like Eggers, like Jonze, loved this book as a kid, totally loved the trailer, but I didn’t enjoy this film at all. But I went with a group of six, and I was the only person who didn’t like it.

    The monsters look great on the screen, but just like Max, they are immature and unlikable twats. I didn’t really like any of the characters. While I see how parallels between intra-monsters dynamics and Max’s intra-family dynamics maybe made sense theoretically, the way it was executed didn’t work for me at all. Maybe if the monsters didn’t talk I would have been okay with it. I guess what I wanted was something simpler…Max is frustrated with his home life, escapes to a strange land (the natural landscapes weren’t strange enough), gets scared, overcomes his fears, makes friends, has tons of wild-ass and fantastical rumpus, learns some lessons, and returns home. But the imaginary place was way too much like home.

  12. I love the trailer for this film and it looks like an absolutely beautiful movie with an exciting soundtrack. However last night I saw the extended trailer. It was the first time I’d heard any monster dialogue, and it really did seem terrible for exactly the reasons this reviewer states (jokey, prime-time cartoonishness).

    While Spike Jonze always manages to bring an authentic, relatable beauty to the fantasy worlds he creates, Eggers’ writing comes across as pretentious and emotionally detached. I think the pairing of the two is what could bring the movie down. I still really want to see it, though.

  13. Pause..

    The book is about a kid imagining traveling off to this “other place” It doesn’t ACTUALLY happen. It makes perfect sense that the place he imagines would reflect the problems he is experiencing in his OWN life, because his own fantasy world is still based off of his OWN experiences. Max is insolent, bored, petty and childish and the monsters should be too.

    The book is about growing out of those things and becoming “grown up”

    I think the fact that the “monsters” that Max fantasizes about taming have striking similarities to his own family should be pretty obvious what the meaning is.

    a) Max wants control over his own life
    b) Even adult figures (have their moments of MAX)

  15. No way. He’s got his right foot on his heel. It’s a quiet grimace if anything. A moment of boredom. A rest between the rumpuses. Rumpuses?

  16. Another Stranger review turns my wild enthusiasm at (finally) seeing Maurice Sendak’s (wonderful, bizarre and creepy) book on screen, into a chore.
    Thanks Stranger movie reviewers! Note to self: remember to steer clear of these jaded souls’ ramblings.

  17. This movie was never suppose to be a fantastic kid free for all of monster joy. It has bits of that of course. The Wild Rumpus scene, the Dirt War scene for a bit. But what this movie does is elaborate on the underlying themes Sendack was trying to portray. A boy starved for attention and acting out learns that its not easy to be the other people in his life and that maybe just maybe he should tone down his actions for the others. He gets to see how his outward attitude actually looks in the forms of fantastic monsters. You wont come out of this feeling happy go lucky and warm and fuzzy inside. There’s no big happy ending where everything is solved. There is the realistic vision of what a lot of kids have gone through stages of. Whether it be divorced parents, older sister no longer playing with you, no one ever listening to you. Max is shown as a real child, he’s likable enough when he’s good but when he gets mad he becomes highly unlikable and down right annoying (sounds like a kid to me…) Its not a typical kids movie laced with crude jokes and a moral. Its a brutally honest look at a family dynamic through the eyes of an attention starved kid…and its beautiful.

  18. It’s a smart review and could be applied to pretty much everything Dave Eggers has ever written. Sometimes when you strip away the “reality” from a writer’s work, the underlying lack of ideas and emotional cheapness is laid bare.

  19. honestly i thought the movie was lovely and though i don’t usually make negative comments on this blog, the reviewer just sounds jaded and unappreciative.

  21. Actually I really like the Stranger movie reviews. I’ve found that I agree with all the writers fairly often. I heed their advice often about which movies to go to. I don’t think they only write pessimistic crap, although I agree, most movies out there are crap. Good movies are a rarity. There are other movie reviews, like say, the Onion, that has good writing, but I don’t agree at all with their opinions. So I don’t read them. Good job, Stranger, keep up the good work.

  22. Never mind that Maurice Sendak has directly stated that the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are are based off the crazy aunts and uncles he remembers from family gatherings in childhood. You know… family dramas. That’s what inspired the artwork. Why shouldn’t it have informed the film?

    I haven’t seen it yet, but I agree about the voices: they should have been roaring.

  23. Holy shit, your review was spot on. It was a terrible let down. Also, it’s a sad thing when the trailer is actually better than the movie.

  24. This review nailed it. I don’t plan on taking my kids to this. I can’t imagine anyone not at least in their teens being able to enjoy it.

  26. All that is missing is a scene where the wild things and max are all sitting around in a coffee house with their horn rimmed non-prescription glasses, sipping lattes, and discussing the the finer points of the Beta Band while whining about how miserable their lives are and trying to one up each others’ therapy session anecdotes. This movie seems like your basic throwaway, hipster, arthouse fodder. I would imagine most Seattleites would like this film.

  27. I watched it yesterday, and initially was very disappointed. However, after thinking about it for a day, I realized it’s very David Lynchian: an alogory for Max. Every one of the monsters are really another version of Max. Carol is the closest, a wild angry guy who doesn’t know his own strength and might accidentally damage his friend. Another character was the goat, who’s only line was that no one really listened to him and understood him.
    Actually, I found the film, and Carol especially to be quite frightening. When Carol tore off the arm of the chicken guy I thought, WTF? And then his arm was replaced by a stick? How horrible! Carol seemed like he was going to kill Max at several points in the film. I wouldn’t take a kid younger than 10.
    The special effects were fantastic. I loved the giant fort. This could be a cult film in the long run.

  28. Some parents who sat near me during this film brought their about five year old boy. He was very scared, then bored, then scared again. It’s not exactly “The Incredibles” or something. But it was an interesting piece of film. Beautifully executed visuals that did not look like the typical Transformers/Gollem/Dinosaur CGI crap, plus a non-linear and rather thought provoking story line. For me, it definitely captured the essence of the frustrations and joys of childhood.

  29. My son, who is seven, and who was read to by this book found the film not as exciting as “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs,” another film adaptation that doesn’t follow the book at all.

  32. I have to say, I loved the film. I thought it captured, in some unique ways, the singular agony of childhood, particularly that corridor wherein you’ve been going to school for a few years, and have a few more years ’til adolescence and all that comes with it (girls, existentialism, popular music) gives you a whole new set of grievances to address.

  34. I was very excited to see Wild Things. Indeed, the trailer (thank you Arcade Fire, and yes I bought your CD) made me cry. The movie on the other hand…..Well, I can’t say I hated it and I can’t say I liked it either. I think I need to see it again before I really know how I feel about it. Reading the comments here has been helpful, but seriously, this is an unsettling movie. But maybe that’s good. On the other hand during a scene involving the gratuitous maiming of owls, I turned to my date and said,”This isn’t a movie about childhood, this is a movie about mental illness.” So maybe not.

  35. I guess I must be a liar then, because I thought this film was beautiful and moving, and I’m going to see it again. And I will be glad to not have to sit in a room with you assholes while I enjoy it a second time.

  36. Dominic and the other negative commenters here are certainly entitled to their opinions, but I do think they should be taken with a grain of salt – and basing all your movie-viewing choices on the Stranger’s (or anyone’s) reviews just seems sad.

    I did my best to avoid reading much about the movie before going into, though I was aware that it would be dark and not necessarily for kids. I thought it was fantastic. I went with a large group; most of us really liked it, one didn’t like it at all. I can understand having quibbles with it, but I can’t fathom those who literally saw it as a waste of time/money.

  37. Haters here need to take a step back. I think a number of people were hoping for something else from the movie–few books are more beloved than WTWTA, and people can be excused for projecting their own desires on it–but forget about that. Judge it on its own merits. It’s a beautiful piece of work, and a personal, artistic thing, which is rare for a corporate-backed $80 million film. I do think they could have chopped 5-10 minutes out of it, but overall, as Levislade @36 said, the film is absolutely worth your time and money.

  38. I can’t imagine how a feature film with 2 hours of unrestrained wildness would have worked. Jonez triumphed here, but Holden seems to have wanted the impossible.

  39. I can’t imagine how a feature film with 2 hours of unrestrained wildness would have worked. Jonez triumphed here, but Holden seems to have wanted the impossible.

  40. I thought it sucked. It made me wish he just made a music video out of it. It would have worked over 5 minutes, but over 2 hours it most certainly didn’t.

    It was great to look at in parts, but the dialogue and characters really didn’t engage. It was a really brave film and he deserves respect for doing it his way, but it just didn’t go anywhere for me, or the audience I was with.

  41. I thought it was excellent. And if they’d tried to make an hour an a half of nonstop wild rumpus, it would have been boring as hell. There needs to be some kind of conflict to advance the plot – I think it’s a safe bet that the introduction of some non-cannon villain would have pissed way more people off way worse. Do you have another suggestion what else they could have done?

    I’m going to go out on a limb and say that part of the reason everybody loves the book is that you can project whatever dominant emotion onto it you want. I read the book as somewhat melancholy and mostly magical, and I think the movie captured that excellently.

  43. This movie is one of the very few, if not the only recent one, to portray how it really feels to be a kid. Max’s dialogue wasn’t a bunch of smart-alecky, double entendre quips. It was how a real boy would talk, a stream-of-consciousness flow of run-on sentences. The conversation about “recrackers” and materials that would withstand such a device rang true.

    Likewise, if you view the monsters as a projection of Max’s emotions and insecurities, then the movie makes sense. Carol is Max himself, all needy and angry. KW is either his mother or sister, sometimes supportive, sometimes too busy playing with her stupid friends. The goat guy is probably Max’s “Milhouse”, the nerdy kid who tries to be his friend in school.

  45. I loved it. It was beautiful, visually and otherwise. Deeply moving.

    Not a children’s movie. Don’t take your children.

    But everyone else should see it. Don’t read anything else about it until you do.

  46. thank you for verbalizing what i didn’t like about this movie. i just couldn’t find the words to explain it, but this movie definitely left me wanting….

  48. Would WTWTA have been a better movie if…

    A) Pixar made it
    B) Disney made it
    C) Some third-string animation company made it

    D) It featured musical numbers
    E) It featured heartwarming speeches and incredible adventures
    F) It featured a montage that included the seasons changing

    G) It featured highly popular, currently-topping-the-charts tween music
    H) The mom responded to Max’s antics by laughing and saying, “Oh, you crazy kid…”
    I) Max’s snow fort was indestructible and he had tons of friends

    J) None of the above, because it would have been a terrible piece of crap. Except possibly if Pixar made it.

  49. Normally I might agree with many of you (The Stranger does tend to rub me the wrong way), but I have to agree about this film. It was beautifully done, but such a downer! The music was lovely, too, but I kept expecting them to go on parade and be happy at least once. Maybe a smile? All it did was make me realize how depressing depressed monsters are. Not to mention that there were times I found it downright creepy, and I’m an adult! Maybe it’ll end up with a Labyrinth-esque cult following, but I can’t imagine it being hugely successful on its own.

  50. Sorry you didn’t like the film! Maurice sure did. Every quote I hear and read from Maurice Sendak about the film that brings HIS BOOK to life is positive. I would tend to go with Maurice’s opinion over yours…what is your name?

    Beautiful melancholy film! See it in IMAX! …in Max’s honor, of course! Besides, most adolescents I know are melancholy–little do they know how lucky they are right now in their lives.

  51. I must admite right out of the gates i am drunk. That being siad man,FUCK YOU AND YOUR CYNIC HIPSTER BULLSHIT. The fact that they deviated from a story that was 9 or 10, iv heard it was accually 10 sentences long, is not that supriseing. You have accually watched movies before right? And so you know that books and movies are usually different.

    OMG you related it to docter phil, straight up after that i stoped listening to what you had to say. I mean have you accually watched that pig fuckers show? Secondly so what it emotional. Fuck anyone for coming up with a different interpritation for a story. perhaps we should have stuck with 9 lines of dialauge made the movie 15 mins long and added nothing else to the story.

    p.s please die in hell

  52. @43: I felt the exact opposite. And I never read the original book when I was a kid, so I had no preconceptions.

    I can see what they were trying to do, but it really bore no resemblance to my childhood. As a kid all my memories are sublimely happy until puberty, and that’s when things got complicated.

    I guess some people had much more troubled childhoods … and entertainment as Catharsis never does much for me. One for the emo-lovers and Mozza fans only!

  53. What do you fucktards down at stranger drink while you are pondering your movie reviews? Haterade? Being hypercritical of everything that comes your way does not make you sound enlightened or cool. It makes you sound like dime-a-dozen, insecure, snobby little bitch hipsters. And quite frankly, fucking boring. Lighten up. You are allowed to enjoy things that are not a trendy indy band.

  54. from an interview with maurice sendak/spike jonze…”In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy. There’s a cruelty to childhood, there’s an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books.”

    “Maurice was our sort of mentor in this whole thing,” said Jonze. “He was the one person that I really wanted to please…Early on he said, `You need to make this your own. Don’t worry about me, don’t worry about the book, don’t worry about what anyone else expects. You have to just make something bold and not pander to children and make something that’s as dangerous for its time as the book was in its time.'”

    Whatever the problems of children’s literature, they’re probably worse for children’s movies. Sendak says you’d never “catch me at a kiddie movie.”

    …this was not supposed to be a movie to take children to, nor was it ever intended to be another lighthearted romp that left your mind the minute you left the theater, as so many adventure films directed at children do.

  55. I liked this movie. It seems like most negative reviews of it focus less on how successful the actual film was in achieving what it sets out to do, and more on the reviewer’s own pre-viewing expectations of what it *should* try to do.

  56. I really hate those hackneyed things people keep on putting into stories; that is to say, characters.

    When will these screenwriters learn how boring characters can be? We get it already! You have a name and a personality, traits, flaws, you change…blah blah blah!

    It’s so done.

    Can I get a job as a film critic for ‘The Stranger’ now?

  57. I agree with the review. Very disappointed in this movie. They over thought it and we get this shit. The moment the Beasts started talking I wanted to Cry.. So horrible. The cinematography was overall to real. This works amazing for some of Spikes skate board videos “exploding walls, invisible skateboard.. etc..” but we needed some fantasy magic. Instead it felt like it was shot by a journalist for the most part. It should have felt more like a Henry Rosseau painting. The movie could have been made with a lot less dialogue and alot more simple beast howling,snorting and sniffing. God forbid we take a chance…. Were all so clever now… With our statistics and numbers to back us up.. We are simply to clever.

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