Eye Candy #33 - "Where the Wild Things Are"

Where the Wild Things Are: Or as I like to call it “Where the Furry Codependents Are”. Based (some would say loosely) on the Maurice Sendak book, this is the story of Max, a young boy who sails away from his family in a fit of pique and ends up Where the Wild Things Are. He makes himself their king and they have various make-believe adventures, before sailing back home. Embellished heavily from the 10 sentence book, Max here is a wild child. He tackles his dog, picks fights with older kids, bites his mother, and runs away from home to escape the consequences of his actions. The wild things are simple creatures, most of them not exceptionally bright, that Max wins over through braggadocio. They live to have someone else tell them what to do. Director Spike Jonze can always be relied upon for a visually striking film, and “WTWTA” is no exception. I myself am glad to see people wandering in giant, padded costumes, because when everything goes CGI, it’s pretty durn boring. The voice talent is extremely well-chosen, with James Gandolfini in the lead as Carol (the “thing” with the most focus), along with Chris Cooper, Forrest Whittaker, and Catherine O‘Hara. So it looks and sounds great. But the message of the film is muddled at best. Where as the book has always seemed to me a celebration of childhood, this film feels like the death of that childhood. Max is an ADHD brat from a broken home. He is petulant, self-centered, spoiled, angry, manipulative and violent. And the through-line of the story is Max learning that he can’t keep carrying on how he carries on, which is all well and good…except that’s not the point of the book. So who takes a children’s book, and make it into a movie about the death of childhood? That’s like turning “Fancy Nancy” into a parable about women with body image disorders. For the love of Pete, keep Jonze away from “Knuffle Bunny”! So ambitious visually, but the story is lacking. Woodchuck sez, “Was hoping for better, and didn‘t get it.”