LOS ANGELES
Where the Wild Things Are, the book, is just 339 words long. But in turning it into Where the Wild Things Are, the movie, director Spike Jonze has expanded the basic story with a breathtaking visual scheme and stirring emotional impact.
It's a gorgeous film: This may sound contradictory, but it is intricate and rough-hewn at the same time, dreamlike and earthy. What keeps it from reaching complete excellence is the thinness of the script, which Jonze co-wrote with Dave Eggers.
The beloved and award-winning children's book, which Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated 45 years ago, holds up beautifully today because it shows keen insight into the conflicted nature of kids -- the delight and the frustration that often co-exist simultaneously.
Jonze gets that, too. There is always been an inventiveness to his films, a childlike playfulness even amid some of the darker material within Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. With its warm lighting and detailed production design, Where the Wild Things Are remains lovingly faithful to the look and spirit of the book but functions assuredly as its own entity.
Jonze obviously understands the feelings of fear and insecurity, and the inability to articulate them, that the wild things represent, and he has taken the bold step of showing them not through animation but rather by using actual people in giant, furry costumes. The monsters were voiced by an all-star cast and enhanced through digital effects to make the facial features seem more lifelike.
And because talented character actors, namely James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara and Paul Dano, had the benefit of voicing their roles on the same stage at the same time, rather than the standard practice of recording their parts independently of each other, their interplay feels more organic.
At their center is Max, played by 12-year-old Max Records, a lonely, misunderstood kid who runs off one day to the magical land where the wild things are and becomes their king. Records is no self-conscious, precocious child actor: He makes Max feel real and relatable, full of joy and rage like any little boy.
Catherine Keener has some lovely, subtle moments at the film's start as Max's struggling single mom, who inadvertently neglects him when he needs attention the most.
Because so much is right about the look and feel of Where the Wild Things Are, you wish there were more to the screenplay. Despite many individual moments of great energy, the overall narrative momentum is seriously lacking, and you walk out of the film realizing that not a whole lot happens. There is the wild rumpus, of course -- lots of running and jumping through the forest, leaping and wrestling and collapsing in a giddy, exhausted heap. (The indie-rock score from Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Carter Burwell adds to the film's sense of melancholy.)
Mainly though, the wild things, who have names such as Carol, Judith, Douglas and Ira, bicker among themselves about whether to make Max their king, and the best way to build a fort. Many amusing lines do emerge, and perhaps a potentially frightening moment or two for little kids.
Where the Wild Things Are is certainly as suitable for children as the book that inspired it, but it will probably roar even more loudly to adults in the audience who aren't ashamed to get a little nostalgic about their own childhoods.
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