When I was very little, back when I still believed monsters
lived under my bed, there were two books which were a major part of my life.
These were treasured stories which I needed to be read to me on a daily basis,
and eventually I started reading them on my own as often as I could, without
ever getting tired of them. They were Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s
Goodnight Moon,
and Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.
When I heard
that Sendak’s children’s classic was going to be turned into a movie, I must
admit to having some trepidation. Well, thankfully, my initial misgivings about
the film version were way off the mark, as director Spike Jonze and company have
created a remarkable children’s film.
Just as in the book,
precocious and rambunctious young Max (very well played here by young Max Records)
is something of a hellion whose out of control antics stretch his beleaguered
mother’s patience to the breaking point. When mom (the always great Catherine
Keener) has a boyfriend over one night, Max’s unruly behavior causes her to send
him to bed without supper. But instead of going to his room, this spurs Max to
take a nighttime boat ride to a mysterious island where the wild things are.
There, he meets a truly wild collection of monsters who are even more
rambunctious than he is.
Max fits in to the point where he becomes their king, and the place seems like
paradise at first, with cool friends like Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini,
better known from the Sopranos), Judith (voiced by Catherine O’Hara), Ira
(voiced by Forest Whitaker) and KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose, best known as
Claire from Six Feet Under). Yet Max soon realizes that not everything is picture
perfect in this new land. For starters, Carol has a nasty temper while Judith is
very distrusting, and the really cool fort that Max has the monsters build soon
falls to ruin amid much bickering and arguing. Soon Max begins to realize his
place in the world as the monsters (who are really reflections of his innermost
thoughts and feelings) inadvertantly show him the value of responsibility, respect for others,
and reigning in his destructive impulsiveness.
People expecting a more traditional (and insipid) fantasy like The Chronicles of
Narnia will be disappointed here, because Jonze, in adapting liberally from
Sendak’s short book, has made it clear that the land where the wild things roam
exists solely within the dynamic imagination of Max. It’s a place of refuge that
he retreats to after a particularly bad experience with his mother. And it’s
also a place where Max learns how to better deal with the real world and its
daily terrors, and winds up becoming a better person in the process. The monster
effects are superbly done by the Henson Company--it’s their work, along with the
great script, and the marvelous voice actors, that makes each creature come
vitally to life. If you’re a person who believes that children should be
completely shielded from all of the realities of the world, then just avoid
this at all cost. Yet, if you’re looking for a truly unconventional and honest
movie about the terrors of childhood--which offers some eye-opening advice--then
Where The Wild Things Are is just as highly recommended as the original book.
--SF
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