Turning books into screenplays often means slicing away key supporting characters, subplots and other sections in order to winnow down the story to a manageable two hours.
For the screen version of “Where the Wild Things Are,” the problem was just the opposite.
How do you tell a full-length story from a tale told in under 10 sentences?
The minds behind “Wild Things” – novelist Dave Eggars and director Spike Jonze – seem to nail that question from the opening scene.
But once the heralded Wild Things arrive, it’s clear the original story’s length was just the right size.
“Wild Things” stars young Max Records as Max, an imaginative boy with some anger control problems. He’s a whirlind dervish of boy-appropriate activity.
But Max isn’t content with snowball fights and forts. He must give his single mom (Catherine Keener) fits – as well as a bite mark for daring to keep him in check.
Angry as ever, he flees the house and finds a boat docked innocently enough near a body of water. It’s here where his real journey begins.
Soon, he’s standing amongst the Wild Things, huge creatures who don’t know whether to hug him, play with him … or pop him in their mouths for a midnight snack.
Instead, they make him their king.
So far, so wonderful. Jonze’s approach to the children’s classic is mostly revential, and the almagam of old school puppetry and CGI flourishes is a perfect way to animate these beasties.
The opening scenes go by in a blur, with the shaky camera and frantic child’s play stirring feelings in any adults minds of what it was like to soar with your imagination and be crushed by the smallest defeats.
Yet mid film it’s all too clear the source material’s brevity hasn’t been solved here. We’ve already been awed by the puppetry on display, and by a young child actor who brings Max’s anger and joy to life.
Then what?
“Wild Things” doesn’t have an answer. Instead, we’re given a few frantic play fights (dustball fights instead of snowball fights) and a play war which goes nowhere. And the neurotic behavior of the lead creature, Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) only confuses matters.
Some subplots bubble up but add little to the film, like Carol’s curious infatuation with a fellow Wild Thing.
The film’s hipster soundtrack combined with the indie sensibility Jonze introduces to the genre promise a children’s films adults can lap up. But what emerges is one without enough whiz bang action for the kids and lacking narrative cohesion for their parents.
(Photo: Young Max (Max Records) runs around in his signature costume in “Where the Wild Things Are.” – Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
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My 7-year-0ld son, who read the book again last week for probably the fifth or sixth time, wants to see the movie. I don’t want to see it, based on the trailers, Eggers’ well-documented penchant for self-indulgence, and the clichéd indie soundtrack.
Also, nothing good can come of this.
Will be very curious if kids like the film. I thought the young uns would be bored by Wall*E, but I was totally wrong on that front.
For what it’s worth, Benjamin loved Wall-E when he saw it the first time in the theater, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about seeing it again on DVD. I think Wall-E might be the only Pixar movie about which that may be said.
By the way, I don’t know whether or not we’ll see Where the Wild Things Are. I think I’d rather spring for the Toy Story 3-D double feature. That’s still playing, right?
Toy Story 1 and 2 taught me how great “kids” movies could be … and yes, the double feature did well in its first week of release so I imagine it’s still playing at a theater near you.
This review completely missed or ignored the subtext of the movie. Almost every Wild Thing and activity done with the Wild Things was a comment/exploration of the first 10-20 minutes of the movie, where Max was with his mother and sister in the ‘real world’. I saw this movie with two guys, both of which thought the subtext of the movie very interesting. Personally, I found the entire thing extraordinarily sad and ended up crying at the end. My roommate and her boyfriend went to the next showing and their reactions were the same; the guy found the exploration of childhood interesting, the girl cried.
I’m relatively confident a young child would not enjoy this movie, but I’m shocked that an adult would not.