A young child lies beneath the quilted covers of his bed, awaiting his parents to tuck him in. After the child gulps his cup of water, his mother sets his plastic cup on a small bookshelf adjacent to his bed and asks what bedtime story he would like to read tonight. The child knows no hesitation.
“Where the Wild Things Are!”
Recently this same scene has played out in a different setting. Parents bring their children to movie theaters around the globe, laden with candy and soft drinks, and ask what movie their kids would like to see. The answer is the same:
“Where the Wild Things Are!”
Ironically, the film is not a children’s movie, or at least not designed solely for children. Most of the film focuses on the angst of the young, lonely protagonist Max and his equally depressed and capricious monster friends. While the names and appearances of the characters find their root in the children’s book by Maurice Sendak, the storyline of the movie provides greater depth than found in Sendak’s volume or in most children’s movies.
It is a drama – there are no (or very few) comedic scenes typical to hybrid child/adult films. Much of the conflicts are redundant in principle but escalate in gravity throughout the movie. This effectively adds ample amounts of tension to the plot by driving the audience to ask how the movie will resolve, but it also serves to remove childlike blitheness from even the most innocent, cheery scenes. The audience is invited to join the young protagonist in his quest to dispel the Wild Things’ unhappiness by suffering alongside him as he uses the shallow, self-serving qualities of a mischief-maker’s mind to attempt to please everyone.
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