Where the Wild Things Are (Saturday, October, 17, 2009) (150)

I have to admit that when I was growing up the Maurice Sendak book Where the Wild Thing Are was not my most favorite book. I was always thrilled by the illustrations, but found the story rather simple. When I first saw the trailer for this Spike Jonze film, I was once again excited by the visuals (and happy with the great use of an Arcade Fire song) and looked forward to the film.

I think Spike Jonze has a really interesting aesthetic and has made and performed in some very interesting movies and shorts. Say what you might about Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, but it's hard to criticize the very unique look of the movies. He has a way of making very mundane and frequently dirty settings look amazing. He relishes 1980s kitsch, synthetic print fabrics and orangey-brown plastics. He's weird - but weird in a good way. Fun and interesting weird.

In the movie, Max is a young pre-teen boy who has a wonderful imagination, but is an outsider in his home town. His best friend is probably his mother, but she is mostly wrapped up in her new boyfriend. One night, when his mother has her boyfriend over for dinner, Max throws a tantrum and runs away to the woods (while wearing a fantasy animal costume). When he wakes up he finds that he's in a world where the wonderful giant Wild Things live. They behave exactly how a 10 year-old boy would expect them to. They break things and build forts and the fight and love one another. They quickly make him their king and he helps to repair their ever-fracturing world.

The themes of the story are rather eternal. The story is reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz or Candide with the idea that the grass is always greener over there - but is ultimately pretty good back home. Max is a universal childhood character that is very easy to understand and identify with.

What I love about the movie is that it really feels like it is seen from the eyes of a child - and not an adult version of what children see. That is, the Wild Things are just big stuffed animals, rather than more realistic fleshy or CGI beings. They are childish, rough and imperfect - and clearly things that could not exist in our world. They only exist in their own world - in Max's world. This world has a wonderful forest and a wonderful dessert with sand dunes - but it totally small enough to be contained in a kids head.

As much as I liked the Wild Things land, though, I feel that the movie ran a bit long at the end of the second act and beginning of the third. I lost track of the story there and think that it should have been cut and tightened a bit.

Still, Jonze amazed me again with a vision that maybe no other director does as well. The art directors and production designer deserve a lot of credit too, as does cinematographer Lance Accord. I think the film is set in the 1980s (at time when I read the book) and I see myself as Max, a bit of an outsider and a bit sad (oh, OK - I'll stop with the boo-hoo). If I had known then that this movie would be made in my future, this is exactly how I would want it to look.

Keep Spike Jonze weird!

Stars: 2.5 of 4