Dad Blogs - Dad Blogs | Where the Wild Things Are

Monday, 12 October 2009 23:48

Written by Thraeryn

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Where the Wild Things Are poster

What do you get when you combine an indie-pop soundtrack with 108 minutes of 8-foot, furry ten-year-olds who have awkward interpersonal relationships?

You get the latest feature film from Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are. It's the story of Max, a kid whose family seems barely present. He gets into a fight with his mother one night and takes a boat to the land where the Wild Things are. They make him their king through a bit of a bluff on his part, and they have . . . adventures.

In case you don't know Spike Jonze, he's a bit of an idol to the young, hipster crowd. He directed the video for Fatboy Slim's "Praise You", appearing on film as the leader of the Torrance Community Dance Group. He and Charlie Kauffman were the minds behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Jonze is also one of the minds behind "Jackass" and Jackass: The Movie.

Perfect for a family film based on a beloved children's book, right?

I went in expecting a somewhat pretentious film geared towards twenty-somethings, a film with oddly-placed music from bands I'm too old to know. I expected a Spike Jonze adaptation of 48 color pages, maybe ten of which have text. I got exactly what I expected.

Let's talk about the good things for a moment. Visually, it's a Spike Jonze film: beautiful, grand, and with careful detail. The fort that Max and the Wild Things make is exceptional, and everyone in the theater wished they had a similar fort when they were kids. The acting is good. The likes of Catherine O'Hara, James Gandolfini, and Forest Whitaker lend their voices to the Wild Things, and youngster Max Records plays Max with as much emotion and honesty as anyone could want. The Wild Things themselves, combinations of animatronics and careful CGI, are stunningly faithful representations of Maurice Sendak's illustrations.

These aren't the things that make Where the Wild Things Are fail. The movie falls down in large part due to the characters. Despite the emotion they all show quite visibly and painfully, hardly any of the characters are real, are more than barely fleshed-out stereotypes. Max spends most of the movie playing with giants that FEEL like they're analogies for something, but no one knows what. Carol (Gandolfini) seems a pretty obvious version of Max, prone to anger and loneliness when things don't go his way. In that sense, K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) seems to be a likely portrayal of Max's real sister, Claire (Pepita Emmerichs). There's a problem with that, though: we see Claire in maybe two scenes. In one, she's on the phone telling Max to buzz off; in the other, she and her friends play with Max briefly, then damn near kill him as they destroy his ice fort and leave him crying in the snow. This contrasts pretty heavily with K.W.'s friendly, caring attitude. K.W. seems like a big sister we'd want to know, and Claire is the husk of a frustrated teen with a dorky little brother.

I guess the movie is supposed to be about change, about how Max can't stop any of the changes at home or halt the social problems that the Wild Things experience. Max makes claims like a politician when he arrives, saying he can keep the group together and banish unhappiness. As we all know, that just doesn't happen in either the real world or fantasy realms. Everyone gets sadder and sadder, and the group of Wild Things splits further and further. Max eventually gives up and decides to go home, and that's when he seems the happiest in the entire film: when he says "What was I thinking? I'm just a kid" and runs back to Mommy. The Wild Things get together again long enough to say "farewell", making the audience wonder if Max's arrival screwed up social dynamics that worked most of the time.

Where the Wild Things Are completely fails to capture the spirit and message behind Sendak's book: that no matter how badly a kid screws up, their parents will love them and keep dinner warm. Jonze tries to turn it into something more, something bigger, and ends up with a pretty roll of celluloid that is full of emotion and completely devoid of meaning or message.

The Right Price: I, my five-year-old, and her mother were all happy that we didn't pay to see this movie. It's not a children's film; the adults laughed far more often than any of the kids in the audience. If you really need to satisfy your curiosity, wait for the DVD. Even my twenty-something hipster friend was disappointed by my description, and she is a dedicated Spike Jonze fan. The only reason my hopes weren't dashed like my girlfriend's is that I had no hope.

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