Movie 12: Where The Wild Things Are

Max is a, lets be nice and say precocious, young boy with a very vivid imagination. One night he dons his wolf suit and sees his mum with what I assume is a boyfriend before dinner. Max then acts out and is told to go to bed, when he bites his mum on the shoulder and runs off. He then finds a boat and sails off to the island Where The Wild Things Are.

The wild things are big kinda scary looking monsters that are actually kinda nice, if neurotic, and after Max spins a tale he becomes their king with the task of making everything on the island right again cause they’re sad and lonely.

First off, this isn’t really a kids movie. Kids won’t get it, there’s far too much cerebral stuff going on. Older ones might enjoy the general childish antics and the look of the monsters but they won’t get most of the rest of it. Second off, I have no connection to the original book. Never read it as a kid so it holds no place in my heart. The closest I’ve come to knowing anything about it is the Simpson’s episode where Lisa meets the monsters. As I understand it the book has a whopping 10 sentences of dialogue and I’m guessing its very short, so when it comes to an adaptation this is more original material than actual book.

I may be missing the point as the film seems to be getting rave reviews. I found it…what’s the word…meh? It’s good and all, the voice acting and characterisation is well done. And I guess the monsters being a bit of a mix of childish rough housing and acting out with adult neurosis thrown in is very clever. But it all comes together to be a big bag of nothing all that remarkable for me. And my guess is that Max is supposed to grow and learn from his adventure, you know like all these movies, but he doesn’t seem to. Not that he was a particularly bad kid at the start, just a bit too much sometimes.

Its also a fair bit of a downer too.

I do love the monster costumes though. They look a fair bit like Ludo from The Labyrinth, and understandably so as they were build by The Jim Henson Company. However in this case the faces had to be CGI’d in after as the heads were far too heavy for the actors. Understandable as Ludo’s head wasn’t really a headpiece, and his center of gravity was probably easier for the puppeteer.

In fact, your probably better off watching Labyrinth as it’s a better movie. Okay, that’s not exactly fair. I could do that every second review. What I would say is don’t watch Where The Wild Things Are if you want an hour and a half of crazy fun, or if your watching it with kids cause they’ll like it. But I can’t highly recommend it and I can’t say to avoid it. It’s good, just not great

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