I wanna be like you ... Little boy Max finds that he’s the jungle VIP in Spike Jonze’s sublime adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are
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Film Review: Where The Wild Things Are (PG)
By Kim FrancisDecember 16, 2009
Stars Catherine O’Hara, Max Records, James Gandolfini, Tom Noonan, Michael Berry
If you remember reading Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are as a child, you’ll probably remember that it wasn’t very long. About eight lines, in fact. Hardly enough to sustain a feature film, or so you would think.
But maverick director Spike Jonze has done the seemingly impossible and brought it to screen life as a major motion picture.
Jonze’s version of the story concerns Max, a boy who feels ignored by his much-admired elder sister and neglected by his hard-working single mother.
One night Max throws a tantrum, bites his mother and then runs away.
Where he runs away to is an imaginary land across the sea, populated with monsters.
Max persuades the wild things who live there not to eat him and as a result of his apparent special powers, the wild things decide to make him king, to both rule and help them.
But when things start to fall apart, Max begins to reassess his place among them and decides to go home.
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The opening scenes, focusing on Max’s experiences as a child, exploring his feelings of alienation, are so realistic and heart-wrenching that you will be fighting back tears even at these early stages.
You’ll recognise and identify with the confusing feelings of isolation, loneliness and of being an outsider from your own childhood; it’s quite astonishing how Jonze manages to evoke these painful emotions so effectively.
Jonze also captures with apparent ease what it is like to be a child – in the way Max plays, in the things he does, in the anger he feels and in the way he expresses it.
Where The Wild Things Are is a remarkable, sweet and unique film that is both offbeat and low-key.
Jonze has expertly created a soporific atmosphere that conjures up memories of bedtime stories, particularly in the early stages of Max’s imagined world.
Adorable, touching, funny and understated, you’ll find yourself choking back tears at the film’s ending.
A voice cast that includes talent like James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker and Chris Cooper never plays for laughs and delivers lines imbued with a lullaby-like quality to keep the tone meditative and hypnotic, helping to give credence to the story of a boy’s imagined escapist world, populated with beasts who each represent a facet of his personality.
Where The Wild Things Are is a triumph for Spike Jonze. Taking the essence of a clearly much-loved childhood picture book, he turns it into a beautiful and moving childhood tale.
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