Where the Wild Things Are – Review

Where the Wild Things Are will be one of the more polarizing film-going experiences you’ll run into now-a-days. Spike Jonze fought for his vision of the classic children’s book against the studio, that has been much publicized. Against a lot of odds, Maurice Sendak’s story comes alive. It’s a visual feast, as only Spike Jonze can do, with amazing cinematography, CG, and set design. But getting back to the topic of polarization, the thing any filmmaker who adapts something special to a lot of people cannot control is the audience’s own visualization of the source. If anything, it is his vision. For an audience, the proper mind set should be to take it at that value, but I will side with the audience this time, as this isn’t what we cherished from the book.

The film is a bore.

Sendak’s wonderful, simple take on childhood and what it is like to be a child, is confused in this big screen adaptation. Now, Sendak approved of what Jonze did in the film, and I think that is because he did hit the right notes from the theme in the book. But Jonze strikes an odd cord in the film of mixed messages and adult bits of humor and themes, that really doesn’t work. The kid is a wild, unruly child, and justly so. The situation is set up for him to expand into his world of imagination, and so far this works. Correct me if I am wrong, Where the Wild Things Are has no message, even though it hits the cord of Sendak’s story, it fails to capture. The popularity of the book, stems from our own persoanl attachment to the characters, the words, the feelings it evokes. The film should have transported you back into that wonderful feeling of being a kid. It never allows us to feel. It’s almost to desensitized, to distant, to arouse us into what it thinks it trying to be.

I’m sure many will find this to be a stroke of genius, and others, will be bored out of their minds. I wonder if multiple viewings will help it? I feel guilty for disliking it, almost as if I did something wrong type of guilt. Where the Wild Things Are is an aggravating chore; a brilliant visual mess that will find a cult following, but don’t worry if you don’t understand the film or its cult, you’re not missing much.

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