Filmociraptor

By far my most anticipated movie of the Fall season, I wanted so badly for Where the Wild Things Are to blow my mind and leave me in a pool of joyful and sorrowful tears. Unfortunately, the trailer made promises that the film couldn't cash making for what turned out to be a stretched piece of meandering boredom.

Where the Wild Things are is the story of Max, a 10-year-old boy with a wild imagination and the disposition to be kind of an asshole to his family when he doesn't get what he wants. After a battle with his mom, played by the amazing Catherine Keener, Max runs away, hops on his little sail boat and sets off to find whatever adventure may come next. Where he lands is on an island where he meets, and becomes king of the Wild Things, a wily band of talking creatures trying to bring some sort of order to their small society.

Accepting Max as their king, the wild things look to him for guidance,  but when a lot of his guidance doesn't turn out too well, they turn tail almost on a dime with Max left confused and scared by the growing turmoil within the group. Why were they having so much fun before, but now are so easily swayed away by their own propensity for the dramatic?

Spike Jonze has crafted a beautiful and unique film to look at. Deciding to use body suits instead of full CGI for the wild things was a stroke of genius allowing for a more realistic performance from the young but impressive Max Records, and also a believable set of over sized, furry misfits. The traditional Spike Jonze look is as apparent here as it is in his other features, but in this case it's used to help amplify the whimsy and childishness of the film instead of the general weirdness that's so apparent in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (two films that I love). The style works really well for WTWTA to the point where I'll probably own it just to look at it, and maybe check out any commentary Jonze or Sendak may add to the DVD.

When you get to the end of the film, there's no denying that you'll be thinking "Yup, that was a stretched out version of a 48 page book." The book consists of only 10 sentences and that's about as many that get said in the movie that have any sort of consequence. It's incredibly bloated. It's as if Spike Jonze and co-screenwriter David Eggers grabbed the book at both ends and stretched it like silly putty until it was long enough to fill a quota then didn't bother filling in the blanks with anything but yelling and monsters.

Though the movie is bursting at the seams with the entire spectrum of human emotions, they rarely amount to anything. When they all get angry, it takes almost no time to win them back, yet when they're happy, the smallest thing will crush their spirits and start an argument. A lot of times the emotions are hard to follow. I found myself wondering why at times certain wild things would be sad, when so recently before they were having fun. It was confusing to me and I'm an adult(ish), so asking a 10-year-old to comprehend what's going on a lot of the time would be like asking a cow to do math. Shit just isn't going to happen. A kid's movie this is not.

On top of the emotional roller coaster falling off the rails, the story never seems to progress. Sure there are some things going on for you too look at, but there's no real plot beyond, "Max is king...shit goes wrong." What we were supposed to see was a progression of the Max character to the point where he realizes just what it means to be together as a family, but you never really got that. As the movie faded out, I felt like he would be just as big of a jerk to his mom if she ever tried to feed him frozen corn again.

Despite the one genuinely touching scene at the end, the beautiful visuals and stunning creatures were not enough to make up for the films general lack of substance. Very well shot, poor character development, incoherent emotion.

2.5 stars