Where's The Wild Things' Spark?

After many extensive hours (years, really) of watching movies, I'm pretty good at calling out which ones are going to be awesome and which ones are going to lag during any given release. But even someone like myself who reads way too much Entertainment Weekly can be wrong, and although I think a lot of people are going to disagree with me, I had a disappointing entertainment moment recently.

I didn't love Where the Wild Things Are. I'm revealing this now because I figure at this point most people who, like me, were anticipating the movie's release have seen it and maybe have reached the same conclusion as myself.

Director Spike Jonze, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers, created an interpretation of the classic Maurice Sendak children's book (winner of the 1964 Caldecott Medal) that just didn't do it for me. (Of course, it wasn't like I was forced to sit through New York Minute again, arguably the worst movie I have ever seen in its entirety, but that's a story for another day). There were numerous things I liked about Jonze's movie, including how visually engaging it is. Set in isolated and immense landscapes of deserts, forests and beaches, the vastness of these backgrounds help the viewer key into the characters in the moment. This is a good thing because the Wild Things (constructed by the Jim Henson Creature Shop) look awesome, to say the least. The original creative concept goes back to Sendak's illustrations of creatures that had both traits of various animals yet possessed a unique human quality, and while they tower over the protagonist Max (Max Records) in the film, these same elements make their existence seem fairly natural to Max, as well as the viewer.

Besides the visual appeal, some of these characters also have interesting personalities that pulled me in. Max is a complicated character for a child--a mix of being intensely innocent, but also misunderstood and angry - and I thought Records rose to the role's demands. In contrast, the Wild Things' personalities (namely their all-over-the-place mood swings) were a little harder to wrap my head around. However, James Gandolfini providing the voice of Carol brings some of that same inner conflict evident in Max to the Wild Things' world. Plus to top it off, the music is fresh and engaging (check out some of the tracks on the motion picture soundtrack by Karen O and the Kids).

So then I obviously didn't like something about the movie. What I've narrowed down to be my main gripe is that as a picture book, Where the Wild Things Are invites the reader to share with Max and create their own "no-holds-barred" world by looking at the illustrations and creating their own story. I took a read through the book again the other day and I fixated on the pages that had no words. The problem is the movie, in which the viewer is made to follow along solely with Max's singular view of what a rules-free world is, felt limiting to me. By the end of Max's time with the Wild Things, I was left feeling that not a lot of meaningful events happened or that anyone, Max or Wild Thing, is profoundly impacted by the events.

It's not a kids' movie, which is fine since I don't think it was ever marketed as such. Some darker elements are explored in the movie, through concepts such as Max's relationship with his mother and sister, and of course this overarching darkness mirrors in the Wild Things' world. The problem for me at least was that while I recognized there were supposed to be mirroring lessons and parallel characters between the two worlds, it was difficult to pinpoint what exactly the parallels were supposed to be. Basically, they didn't translate all across the board and as engaging as the movie looked and sounded, I just couldn't get fully invested in the plot or grasp the message it was playing at; it just didn't excite me. Remembering the intended audience, I don't think that the older viewers needed to have these lessons forced upon them, either. That's not to say a movie can't be meaningful or have a purpose, but I felt that there was a disconnect in the transition from the subtle message about family of the picture book, to the in-your-face way it came across on the big screen, and not clearly at that.

Many people I've talked to have really enjoyed the movie and people will surely continue to see it (and perhaps claim to love it out of an obligation to honor childhood nostalgia) based on its literary popularity, but I found this movie to be a case of the age-old issue about how to react to book to film adaptations. However, while many complaints with such adaptations involve major distortions of plot, this is a case when there was little plot to begin with and the story relied heavily on the reader's interpretation. Certainly Where The Wild Things Are kept the basic plot of the book, but the big problem is that it tries to make more out of this plot than I think was ever needed; I say let the book's "wild rumpus" speak for whatever you want it to mean.