Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Film review: ‘Where the Wild Things Are’

There’s not a lot to Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are.”

Famously only nine sentences and 338 words long, yet augmented by visionary illustrations, it uses that brevity to capture with honesty and insight the anger and frustration of young Max, sent to bed without his supper. Banished to his room, Max creates a vivid world of his imagination, escaping his troubles for what seems like a better world. But in the end, maybe his is just fine, after all.

There’s not really a lot to Spike Jonze’s film version of “Where the Wild Things Are,” either. And while the film is touching, even moving at times, and the visuals every bit as visionary as Sendak’s drawings, the lack of a compelling narrative to carry it through the balance of a full-length, 94-minute movie makes it ultimately less satisfying.

Jonze and Dave Eggers, with whom he adapted the screenplay, must necessarily augment the story, and while that might scare some of the book’s devoted fans, they needn’t worry, at least not at first. The opening sequence, in which we learn the source of Max’s frustrations, is as good as anything in the movie.

Max (Max Records) is a loner, building himself an igloo, setting himself up for a snowball fight with his sister’s creepy friends. One of them overdoes retaliation, smashing Max’s igloo; Max is hurt when his sister does nothing to help him.

His feelings are further wounded and confused when his single mother (Catherine Keener) entertains a date (Mark Ruffalo). Wearing his wolf costume, Max acts up, bites his mother and runs away. It’s as good a representation of the conflicting emotions of childhood as you’ll see anywhere.

Max sails to a land in which wild things, giant monsters, live. Only in the movie, it’s more like the waiting room of a psychiatric ward for the clinically depressed. These are some seriously unhappy creatures.

Jonze uses people in giant outfits for the monsters, with digital effects to create faces. An outstanding cast, including James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and Catherine O’Hara, provide voices. Confused, they crown Max their king, and the wild rumpus of the book quickly follows.

That, too, is delightful, as is the tour Carol (Gandolfini) gives Max, telling him that this is Max’s world, it belongs to him. Max goes on to lead the gang in a dirt-clod war, but that’s when things begin to go south, in a not entirely convincing way. Suddenly Max has poisoned the world.

Records is adorable and genuine. The voice actors are quite good, as well, Gandolfini and O’Hara in particular. There is some real magic here.

But there is also the feeling that something’s missing, that Max’s journey isn’t quite complete; the dour mood of the monsters doesn’t help. There’s a reason it’s not called “Where the Sad Things Are,” after all.