CINEMA: Where The Wild Things Are

It’s time to embrace your inner child (if that inner child just happens to be a hyperactive nine-year-old boy with an attitude problem) in Spike Jonze’s hugely imaginative, if not always entirely successful, adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s much-loved book.

With exquisite illustrations and a story full of adventure, no wonder Where The Wild Things Are has become something of a children’s classic, but bringing it to the big screen was always going to be difficult, not least the problem of how to bring eight foot tall hairy monsters to life? Rather than venture down the animation/illustration route Jonze has chosen to use puppets, only utilising CGI for the magic bits.

The film starts in the real world where nine-year-old Max (Max Records) is having trouble coping with his parents’ divorce, the fact his older sister now wants to play with her own friends rather than him, and the scary prospect of mum (Catherine Keener) bringing her new boyfriend into the house. It all proves too much for Max, so dressed in his own hairy monster costume he runs away to the woods where he enters his own imaginary island realm where he is king and his subjects are a bunch of huge, feral creatures all trying to cope with problems of their own.

The most energetic and unpredictable of these is powerful Carol (James Gandolfini) who, just like Max, likes running around and destroying things. But Carol can be moody, especially about his best friend KW (Lauren Ambrose) who has taken to going to the beach to hang out with a pair of owls making Carol very angry indeed. Then there’s Carol’s loyal lieutenant Douglas (Chris Cooper) who tries very hard to keep the peace but finds it difficult when sarcastic Judith (Catherine O‘Hara) is in the middle of a rant. In this special place Max learns about having fun, being afraid and running wild, but also about the importance of family, friends and the concept of ‘home’.

All the creature characters symbolise different aspects of Max’s own personality and all are clearly delineated, so although Max‘s kingdom is make believe it does have its own internal logic. However, despite the film looking utterly glorious, the lack of dialogue and free-roaming camera work feeling liberating, the special effects being really magical and young Max Records shining as Max, about halfway through the film Jonze simply cannot sustain the magic any more. It’s as if he takes you back to a child-like state of mind for a while only for your adult self to wake up and realise it’s only a movie.

However, if you know any real nine-year-olds they are going to love the mud fight, the constant running around, the fort building, nest destroying kinetic energy of it all and you might as well just go along for the ride.