Like most people, I enjoy escaping to elaborately constructed fantasy worlds. I totally identify with Max, the protagonist of Maurice Sendak’s iconic 1963 picture book Where the Wild Things Are. Who doesn’t? Seriously, how amazing would it be to be the boss of reality and hang out with monsters and run around all day yelling? Very amazing. So why is it, then, that Spike Jonze’s adaption of Where the Wild Things Are, a film that should celebrate those very activities, is so decidedly not amazing?
Is it because of the challenge in adapting a scant 10-sentence long picture book into a full-on two-hour film? I mean, it does seem like Jonze is just killing time a lot. There are innumerable shots of Max (Max Records) in midair, jumping around, flying all over place, being “wild.” And there are countless slow-motion shots of characters running into sunsets, running away from sunsets, and running around in unsourced sunlight. Jonze even throws in weird, meandering subplots, like a vague romance, complete with sexual tension (seriously), between Max and a husky female wild thing named KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose.)
Actually, come to think of it, maybe the reason this film fails is because of the wild things themselves. Of course, they were the most compelling aspect of Sendak’s book. They ruled. They loved to party, but were unfailingly enigmatic in doing so. They were all sideways smiles, peeking furtively out of the corners of their eyes, and it was never clear if they were actually under Max’s control or not. In Jonze’s vision, however, the wild things aren’t really that wild, they’re just clinically bi-polar — one minute punching holes in walls “just to feel something,” the next sitting on a beach, staring blankly, saying that they “feel nothing.”
Or maybe the real problem here is the film’s writer, Dave Eggers, the reigning king of cloy, an author responsible for shameless “feelings porn” like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What. Indeed, Eggers’ relentlessly moody screenplay communicates in only two tongues — jubilant release and pensive brooding. As such, spending a couple exhausting hours with this film feels like being trapped inside a teenage girl’s diary.
No, in truth, the real reason Where the Wild Things Are sucks is because transliterating mediums is always bad form — especially so here, because this film represents a big studio enterprise co-opting and exploiting childhood investments. It is real fears and desires replaced with self-aware posturing; it is the understated charm of Sendak’s little book replaced with sledgehammer sentimentality; it is the masterful inter-animation of word and text replaced with slow-motion sequences of sad monsters running across beaches. This film did not need to be made. Where the Wild Things Are already exists — it is a picture book, and it is a very good one. What’s next? Turning Guernica into a video game? Adapting the Sistine Chapel into a rap song?
Sigh. I’m going to go retreat to a fantasy world where this movie doesn’t exist now. Later!
★ out of ★★★★★
