"Where The Wild Things Are" review by Ben Kenber

Spike Jonze’s take on Maurice Sendak’s “Where The Wild Things Are” is one of the few movies I’ve seen in awhile that actually deals with real kids instead of these stereotypically spoiled movie kids who are way too pampered to our collective annoyance. So many family movies these days are watered down crap, mostly Disney releases, that aim to be as inoffensive as humanly possible. As a result, we find ourselves mocking what we see instead of relating to it. But here, we get a young boy who has quite a vivid imagination that he retreats to when the real world becomes too scary to deal with, and who comes from a broken family that is getting by the best they can. For once, we see kids treated as intelligent and capable of learning more than they knew, and it combines them with things that are real, imaginary, and (of course) wild.

The Max of the story is played by Max Records, and he gives one of the best performances that I have seen from a child actor. Seeing him build an igloo out of a snow pile or making a spaceship in his bedroom with his stuffed animals as willing passengers brought back some great memories from when I was a kid. But reality rears its ugly head every once in awhile as some kids thoughtlessly smash down his igloo, not thinking about what it meant to him. Then we see him in elementary school as his teacher explains how the sun will die one day. This is one of the funnier moments in the film in that the teacher just can’t stop talking about all the different ways the planet will die off when the sun is no more. Granted, this won’t happen for another billion years, but when you’re a kid, things like this feel like they will occur tomorrow.

Then everything comes to a head as Max gets very resentful when his mother (the always terrific Catherine Keener) brings home a new boyfriend (played by Mark Ruffalo no less). The bond that Max shares with his mother is very strong, and she is there for him more than anyone else is. But when he is no longer the center of her attention, he rebels and ends up biting his mother on the shoulder. Horrified with what he just did, he ends up running away from home and sailing off to a distant island where he does indeed come across the wild things of the story. And that’s where the rumpus truly begins…

The monsters here are a combined use of puppetry courtesy of the Jim Henson Company (he is still missed) and CGI effects. Using giant puppets instead of just creating the monsters with computers a la George Lucas with the “Star Wars” prequels was a masterstroke on the part of Spike. It makes the monsters all the more real to us as a result. CGI effects are used to give the individual monsters their own facial expressions which vividly captures their happiness and sadness in a way that genuinely pulls at your heartstrings almost effortlessly. With “Where The Wild Things Are,” it never ever felt like I was just watching a whole bunch of special effects. It really felt like I was watching creatures that I could interact with for real.

Of all these monsters, the one with the most recognizable voice is Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini. James plays the prominent wild thing, Carol, and we first see Carol destroying some dwellings that he had just built. For Max, breaking things has a wonderment to it, and Carol links on to that with the upmost enthusiasm. Gandolfini is wonderful, and at times he is wonderfully heartbreaking as we see Carol go from utterly enthusiastic to downright angry to utterly heartbroken. This is not him doing Tony Soprano as if he was all covered with fur. When we last see Carol in the movie, it is a moment that may bring tears to your eyes, and Gandolfini sells it for all that it is worth.

Among the other voices in the movie are Catherine O’Hara’s, and she plays Judith, the one monster who is very mistrusting of Max and who he is. It’s always great to see Catherine in just about anything she does. Paul Dano (“There Will Be Blood”) plays the ever so sensitive Alexander, and he captures the shy nature that is more a part of us than we ever realize. Forest Whitaker voices Ira, and I barely recognized his voice in the part which is pretty impressive. Lauren Ambrose’s voice is a wonderful presence in the character that is KW, and the moments she shares with young Max form some of the movie’s best moments.

You know how people have said how we have met the monster, and the monster is us? Well that is very much the case here also. The monsters clearly represent the different parts of Max’s personality, and he soon comes to see himself in all of them. As a result, Max manages to see things a little more clearly in relation to his own family and especially his mother who loves him so. How many Disney movies can you say cover this ground so effectively without sugar coating every single thing?

I really mean it when I say that Max Records gives one of the best performances I have seen from a child actor in some time. We see him take Max from being a brat of a kid (and we have all been brats at one time or another) to one who is more understanding after all he has gone through. The whole movie really rests on Max’s shoulders when you think about it, and it is a lot to put an 11-year old in that unenviable of positions. That really is almost too much to ask for. Spike Jonze really lucked out with getting Max Records to play this part though, and it is not as easy as it looks for anyone regardless of age. Max really does make his character’s transition from being just a kid to someone who is more mature and understanding, and it really shows in the last half of the film. The monsters name him their king, but they come to see that he is not as powerful as he says he is. Even young Max has to admit that at some point as he has become the mother to these directionless monsters the way his own mother is to him, and he sees himself in a better light as we do.

Spike Jonze shot a good portion of the movie with handheld cameras to give it more of an immediacy, and he thankfully doesn’t overdo it. His work here proves that Spike is indeed one of our most original filmmakers working today as he has given us a family movie that feels unlike any other. This is only his third movie as a director, but he made such an amazing splash with “Being John Malkovich” which combined him with another creative mind, Charlie Kaufman. Together, they made one of the most original movies of the 1990’s, and they went on to make one of this decade’s best films with “Adaptation.” With his film version of “Where The Wild Things Are,” Jonze continues to show that he has a vision all his own, and it does not easily lend itself to comparison the way other films do.

I’m glad that Jonze got his vision to the screen after all this time. “Where The Wild Things Are” was originally supposed to come out last year, but Warner Brothers was apparently considering the possibility of reshooting the whole darn thing. It turned out that the movie was a lot darker than they expected it to be for something they wanted to sell to the whole family. I imagine that the studio heads and executives saw it as a huge money making bonanza that they could sell a plethora of tie in products the way others did with “Transformers” among others. Looks like Warner Brothers’ only option was to pump up a lot of money in advertising so that it would have a big weekend that would encourage more people to see it as the event movie they could not miss to save their lives. I am eager to see how this movie does over the next few weeks, and I really hope a lot of people will embrace it for what it is. It’s not your usual piece of corporate filmmaking that we have all gotten way too used to seeing, and thank god for that.

“Where The Wild Things Are” also has a wonderful soundtrack done by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah’s) and the Kids. It’s one of those soundtracks that has really great songs that fit the themes of the film almost perfectly, and it adds vividly to the strong emotions generated throughout. Outside of the movie, it is a CD (or digital download if you must) to listen to, and the songs themselves threaten to make the Best Original Song Oscar at the Academy Awards a little more legitimate than it has any right to be (assuming one song or two from this film does get nominated).

Is it appropriate for kids? I think so, if only to a certain extent. If you have kids under 6 years old, you may want to see the movie before they do. I was sitting next to a kid and his mother when I saw it, and the kid did get a little freaked out at some parts. Still, the movie is not really traumatic the way “E.T.” was for me when I first saw it or “The Neverending Story” for that matter. If your kid can handle “Bambi,” then I would guess that your kid could handle this one as well. It’s up to you, but better this than the new Lars Von Trier movie, “Antichrist.” They probably wouldn’t let your kid into that one anyway, and although I haven’t seen the movie just yet, I’m positive that’s good thinking on their part.

There are a lot of wonderful moments to be found throughout “Where The Wild Things Are.” One of my favorites was when Max and the monsters were jumping all over the forest, and Carol was creating big dust clouds when he landed. That all lead to what I felt was a heartwarming moment where the wild things pile on top of each other and fall asleep. Seeing Max befriend the somewhat alienated KW is great because their differences really just evaporate at that point. These are two people who can relate and sympathize with one another as they both come from worlds where they rather feel like outcasts.

If there is one weakness to Spike Jonze’s “Where The Wild Things Are,” it’s that the story doesn’t hold together all the time, and there are some moments that drag a little where you really want the pace to pick up. Then again, this movie is based upon a book that is only ten sentences long. The fact that Jonze and his co-writer Eggers were able to craft a story for a feature length movie is pretty amazing I have to say. But if you read (or re-read) the book at some point, you’ll find that there is more to the book than you realize at first. Along with Sendak’s sentences, he gave us wonderfully memorable illustrations that added to the various themes of the story. Spike and his fellow collaborators manage to build upon those manages to craft a movie that stays true to the book without diluting it any.

There was a bookstore next to the theater I saw the film at, and I dashed in there to read the book. I can’t even remember the last time I read the Caldecott award winning story, and there is a lot of different ways you can look at it to where it appeals to adults as well as kids. You could see it as a story of how kids cannot separate from their parents all that easily, and of how you have to go far away to truly realize where home is for you. Maybe you will see it as a story of the one person who becomes king and gets what he wants, but then finds that it is unfulfilling and bereft of those who give him or her a love they cannot live without. Barrack Obama has said that this one of his favorite books ever. Honestly though, I am tempted to see this story these days as almost metaphorical for the Bush Presidency. Bush became President, started the wild rumpus, but while he made his journey back to land on his sailboat, it took him 8 long years to get there, and he was still in contact via fax and cell phone. Don’t worry, he would have found a way! I know this book was written WAY before George W. Bush became President, but I just had to put that in there.

In my opinion however, I think Spike Jonze saw the book as one that can clearly take in a child’s point of view of things. Just about everything in this movie made me feel like I was a child again, and of how we become shaped by the things that make us happy and of what makes us sad. The movie is not meant to break down the imaginary worlds we create for ourselves, but of how they can make us understand the world around us and the people who figure most prominently in our lives. Spike sees “Where The Wild Things Are” as Max’s journey to understanding why his mother treated him the way she did before he ran away. Spike also must see it as how kids can become mature a lot sooner than we think.

“Where The Wild Things Are” is in some ways a godsend for family movies in that it treats kids like real kids, and it has genuine imagination and emotions fueling it throughout. I found that to be very refreshing in today’s risk adverse studio system, and the movie has a lot of great moments that make you laugh and others that will choke you up. That last moment with Carol on the island came close to bringing me to tears. It doesn’t always hold together, but it is a much more accomplished film than a lot of the others that get passed off as “family entertainment.” Indeed, no one could have filmed this version the way Spike Jonze did.

I am also glad that the monsters didn’t have these whiny, high-pitched voices that stayed at that level all through the running time. I see this in just about every other cartoon show that is on television on the weekends, and I have no idea how today’s kids can stand it. There’s room for Barney The Dinosaur or Jar Jar Binks on Jonze’s island, and we can all collectively breathe a sigh of relief for that. With that in mind, this is a rumpus you can and should look forward to!

***½ out of ****