WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE - movie review

This movie? It's like the Sex Pistols being covered by Coldplay.

Spike Jonze has made a beautiful movie here, but it completely misses the point of Maurice Sendak's book. For some reason, he's turned the gleefully ferocious monsters of the title into whiny, neurotic wimps.

Seriously. In the book, the Wild Things make Max their king because he can stare into their eyes without blinking. In the movie, they make Max their king because he says he has a sadness shield that will keep the loneliness out.

Every time there's some action or whimsy or excitement, it's killed dead as the wild things stop to complain about how sad they are, or that the other monsters don't like them. It's like Woody Allen in a fursuit.

The Wild Things look fantastic, a mix of Creature Workshop puppetry and CGI faces. But it's wasted. The creature look exactly like the beasts from the book, but they have none of the savageness. You don't want to know me, one tells Max, I'm kind of a downer. And she's right. I don't.

I get that books and movies are different media, that adaptations require artistic licence, and that to make a feature-length film out of a ten sentence children's book requires some additions.

But surely, if you're adapting a book you want to capture the essence of it.

And that's why this movie failed for me. It just wasn't wild.


EDIT: Some background reading
Newsweek interview with Sendak, Jonze and screenwriter Dave Eggers.

Essay - Do Children Actually Like Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are?"

And from 2004: Bill Moyers interviews Maurice Sendak about the creation of Where the Wild Things Are. Fascinting.