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Where The Wild Things Are (Film)
Rating: PG
Running Time: 101
Country: Australia
Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Catherine Keener, Max Records, Forest Whitaker
Distributor: Roadshow
Film Worth: $13.50
Release Date: December 03, 2009
A charming, hypnotic children’s film brought to life for all ages by a visionary filmmaker.
With the delirious modern classics Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, director Spike Jonze proved himself to be a happy servant of a brilliant script. Resisting the temptation to embark on the kind of visual flights of fancy that he had enjoyed in his prior music video work, Jonze provided a simple, straightforward look and feel for both films, obviously aware that there was more than enough trickery bouncing around within the scripts themselves.
With Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze once again inherently trusts his source material, but this time delivers the kind of visual feast that he has previously avoided. Working from Maurice Sendak's beloved children's book - which takes mere minutes to read - Jonze actually stays true to the material, not embellishing the narrative, and providing a gorgeously focused adaptation that boasts a truly original mood and visual aesthetic.
When young Max (Max Records) gets into a wild fight with his mother (Catherine Keener), he runs and runs and runs, eventually sailing off on wild seas into a bizarre world of his imagining. He washes up on a faraway island populated by big, wild, woolly creatures, who proclaim Max their king. Friendships grow - particularly with Carol (James Gandolfini), the wildest of the wild things - but soon, young Max starts to feel the stinging pangs of homesickness...
The real beauty of Where The Wild Things Are comes with its simplicity. With only minimal plot to work with, Jonze instead makes this a weird, funky mood piece, finding an odd but highly effective rhythm on which the film joyously floats. Loose and freewheeling, this vibe will appeal to youngsters as much as it will to, ahem, university students and the cool crowd.
Jonze's biggest change to the book comes with the characterisation of the wild things; on paper they were just a motley mob of weird looking critters, but Jonze and his co-writer Dave Eggers give them distinct (and distinctly idiosyncratic and eccentric) personalities. Jonze pushes this into even more dryly whimsical territory by having them voiced in a restrained, naturalistic manner by the likes of Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose. This ironically gives the film another kick of inspired weirdness, while also making its beastly anti-heroes even more likeable and relatable.
Charming, imaginative, strange and hypnotically absorbing, Where The Wild Things Are is that rare family film: a joy for children and parents alike.