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. 
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
@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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.