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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Time Out rating

Average user rating

32 reviews

Synopsis

Few could be trusted to bring Maurice Sendak’s much-loved children’s story to the screen, but Spike Jonze – who juggled alternative worlds in ‘Being John Malkovich’ and ‘Adaptation’, and has a unique track record in fantasy – is perhaps one of them. Intriguingly, Dave Eggers is on board as co-writer.

Movie review

From Time Out London

One of the more curious aspects of recent Hollywood cinema has been a desire to make the conceptually outlandish psychologically mundane. ‘Yeah,’ Christopher Nolan invites us to think, ‘when you put it like that, I can see why a guy might dress up as a bat and fight crime.’ Peter Jackson doesn’t just want us to marvel at or pity a 20ft ape, he wants to unpack its abandonment issues. And recently, Wes Anderson granted a talking animal enough pop-psych introspection to acknowledge, ‘I have this thing where I need everyone to think I’m this quote-unquote Fantastic Mr Fox.’

Spike Jonze’s adaptation of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, Maurice Sendak’s beloved story about Max, a naughty boy in a wolf suit who sails away to an exotic jungle and meets giant beasties who make him their king, takes this tendency even further. In expanding the couple of dozen pages of Sendak’s picture-book to feature length, Jonze and his co-writer, Dave Eggers, approach atavistic fantasy with jarring formal and psychological realism. The forest, desert and mountain locations are real, as are the creature costumes (CGI facial expressions aside); beautifully photographed, often in handheld shots and magic-hour light, these landscapes and figures have a solidity, weight and detail that feels uncanny in an age of virtual imagining.

Lumbering around their island with satisfying heft, these weird beasts – hybrids of human, animal and mythical parts that faithfully realise Sendak’s drawings – have an oddly quotidian social dynamic and comically normal names: insecure Judith and Alexander (voiced by Catherine O’Hara and Paul Dano), more assured Ira and Douglas (Forest Whitaker and Chris Cooper), gruff but vulnerable Carol (James Gandolfini). Feeling less like a pack of monsters than a group of long-arrested adolescents left to their own devices, they entertain crushes, grudges and neuroses, pile gleefully into group projects, sustain minor injuries and go off in sulks, yearning for structure and security all the while. Think ‘Lord of the Flies’ on Fraggle Rock. Finding himself in loco parentis, Max must take emotional responsibility, and one of the film’s pleasures is young Max Records’s deft and unaffected portrayal of this shift.

It’s hard to guess whether many children will enjoy the movie. Ponderous at times, it could probably be 15 minutes shorter and lacks a real sense of mortal danger. There’s also sometimes an over-determined feel to the correspondences between the island adventure and Max’s real life with his mother (Catherine Keener) and sister, as laid out in the opening scenes. But ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ stands out for its unusually potent evocation of the timbre of childhood imagining, with its combination of the outré and the banal, grand schemes jumbled up with delicate feelings and the urge to smash things up.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 2051, December 10-16, 2009

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User reviews of this film

mark said...

Posted on Dec 23 2011 22:39 I can't believe anyone can truly like this film,I get the storyline but is that it?is that the whole meaning?what a waste of time.

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Dylan said...

Posted on Sep 13 2011 18:42 I found this film REALLY boring with no incentive or storyline to move these annoying, neurotic characters along, with scenes attempting to be emotive but actually trying too hard to be quirky. I didn't see any clear message come out of it at the end. Overall it was totally unengaging, it moved very slowly with pointless philosophy chucked in to try and appeal to adults. The CGI was pretty rubbish as well.

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Amber said...

Posted on Feb 19 2011 04:02 I can't believe all the comments, either, that say this movie had no plot or storyline. Ever heard of subtext people? Just goes to show that people don't want to think for themselves anymore!

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jojo said...

Posted on Oct 10 2010 06:12 i hated it. it had no plot or storyline. dont even bother reading the back of the case. dont even give it to anybody ether. uuuugh

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Rochelle Norlund said...

Posted on Jun 11 2010 04:23 I really like this movie, because I like the designs of where the movie takes place and designs of the characters, which Spike Jonze, Dave Eggers, Maurice Sendak, Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose and many more did wonderful jobs on this movie.
I also like the scenes that has to do with Carol (Gandolfini) and Max (Records), because they both act like father and son figures to each other, while KW (Ambrose) acting like a mother figure to Max. I also like the tokens of affection both Carol and Max shared together, when they both with each other, which I believe that is so very sweet, cute, amazing and beautiful.
I also wish there's going to be a sequel to this movie, so everyone will want to know on what will happen to Max, if he's going to go back to the island of the Wild Things, and what will happen to Carol, if he's going to apologize to Max for trying to eat him and if he wants to see Max again, so they could be a family once again.
Maybe, just maybe, Carol and KW will still be together as a wonderful couple, have their first kiss with everyone and the audience watching (Mmmmmmmmmmm) and maybe have a baby together.
Maybe, if the Wild Things are going to see Max on his island, maybe Carol could build a boat that will be big enough for all 7 Wild Things, so it will not sink, or be too weak for their weight, and they'll see Max, and live with Max and his family, and be part of his life and his family, so Carol could still be a father to Max, and Max could still be a son to Carol with the same cast of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE movie.
What do you guys think for a sequel?

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Azure said...

Posted on Apr 08 2010 15:39 I'm surprised by how many people say this movie lacked a storyline. The story is of Max realizing that he had been a selfish brat all along, and developing enough maturity to return home. I thought the use of all the monsters representing facets of his personality, or influences in his life, was really well done. And the climax, where he ended up in the role of his mother, while Carol was an out of control brat, was very effective.
I'll admit this was advertised very poorly, towards kids and all, because really it was a fairly deep film that no child could really comprehend.

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Katie said...

Posted on Mar 01 2010 16:56 OMG cant wait to see where the wild things are! it looks amazing and im so ecited im watching it on my b/day!!!

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Dinesh said...

Posted on Jan 29 2010 16:39 This film is not suitable for kids yet it is aimed at children. I had to take my son out after 30mins as it raised serious issues (death, single parenting problems, mum bringing home boyfriend etc) that upset him. Don't do it to your child.. take them to see a proper film.

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critique said...

Posted on Jan 25 2010 16:23 Nice to see something a bit different but not really my cup of tea.

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Johngault22 said...

Posted on Jan 15 2010 17:48 I loved it, I went into it knowing it wasn't a kids' film and as a 30 year old, it was really nice to be reminded what it was like to be a child and I also found the group dynamics really interesting to watch.

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Cappybear said...

Posted on Jan 05 2010 00:08 This sort of film isn't my cup of tea, but my wife wanted to see it. It seemed boring and pointless to me, with a particularly irritating central performance. However, my wife thought it was pretty good, hence the rating.

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puffbother said...

Posted on Jan 03 2010 17:06 A little refreshing but lacking depth ie a good story, bored if it was not for my 3 year old I would of left....also just tooo seventies for me, it reeked of the seventies..something I do not adore, still the monsters looked good but voices did not match...if only there was a good story it does not have to have gore etc but a story then it would have succeeded!

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al lon las said...

Posted on Dec 30 2009 20:52 the story just didn't make sense .very dis appointing

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briggs said...

Posted on Dec 30 2009 18:13 Couldnt wait to leave the cinema. Total and utter garbage.

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Kate said...

Posted on Dec 29 2009 16:55 Beautiful film visually, but seriously lacking in plot and substance. I thought this was a bit scary and menacing for kids - a couple of littlies cried from fear at one point during my screening. I am scoring it 2 stars for beauty -that's it.

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