When rumors surfaced that Maurice Sendak’s 1963 picture book, Where the Wild Things Are, was slated for the big screen, I (like some other people) wondered: How do you stretch a ten-minute bedtime story into a two-hour movie?
Robert Zemeckis confronted that question in 2004, with his adaptation of The Polar Express, another children’s story famed for its sparse sentences and Caldecott-winning illustrations. He fattened the narrative with show tunes, adventure subplots, innovative CGI, and new characters, mostly voiced by Tom Hanks, and the result was a family film that mimicked the book in appearance but diverged from it thematically.
Spike Jonze and his co-writer, the multi-talented Dave Eggers, add to and complicate the Wild Things story in startlingly different ways. For one, there are no A-list actors’ names printed in gilded yellow letters above the movie’s title. I don’t mean to say the actors aren’t A-list material: James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Forrest Whittaker and Catherine O'Hara are hardly unknowns. But if you don't recognize their voices during the movie, you’ll have to lift your feet for the popcorn-sweepers and scrutinize the credits for the actors’ names. And contrary to typical Hollywood fashion, child actor Max Records is rightfully credited first.
A second difference is the soundtrack. No, Max and the monsters don’t break into song and dance. If this were an auteur-less Disney movie, you know it would feature an I-Just-Can’t-Wait-To-Be-King-style number when Max demands the “wild rumpus” commence. Jonze hands the musical reins over to undervalued composer Carter Burwell and Karen O. The music, which exists on a plane somewhere between catchy and harrowing, may be one of the reasons Stephanie Zacharek over at Salon.com characterizes the film as an exercise in “shoe-gazing”.
But actors and soundtrack aside, let’s talk about the narrative. How do Jonze and Eggers thicken Sendak’s ten-sentence book into a hundred minutes of filmstrip?
Article comments
1 - John Lake
Dusty, Dusty..
Well I agree that the psychological issues are the saving virtues of this low budget, high promotion motion picture. I rather thought that the boys parents had divorced, possibly owing to his fathers irrational behavior - but he may be dead. Of course his father didn't eat him. But there may be some flavoring of Oedipus indeed.
I was tempted to review it, but had I suggested someone (Not Hanks!) had come upon some old raggedy "Wild Things" costumes under a stage or in a Kramerish (Seinfeld) trash dumpster somewhere, then decided to make a movie, some would have accused me of negativity.
But the boy, who at one point betrayed a mild English accent, was very good.
2 - Dusty Hixenbaugh
John -- Thanks for the comment! For ten minutes I considered making my own Max costume for Halloween. Would be super easy: White sweatsuit, whiskers and a crown. Is the movie real "low budget"? Roger Ebert's review said the film's budget was in the $80 million range, which doesn't sound skimpy to me, but I confess I don't have a sense of how much money it takes to make a movie with puppets and a little CGI.
3 - Sally Annabella
This has to be the most ludicrous review I have ever read. It's laughable, the extent to which you psycho-analyzed the Oedipal complex. This is simply a child wanting attention from his mom, and when he is forced to realize her world does not always revolve around him, he gets angry and has a little temper tantrum. In the end, he realizes his mom will always be there for him and that it's important for her to do things she enjoys, aside from doting on him. The bottom line: there is not much stronger in the world than the love of a mother for her child.
4 - Dusty Hixenbaugh
You're welcome to laugh, Sally, of course, but what of the symbolism of K.W.'s stomach? And how can we say Max learns to let his mother do what she enjoys, when the only post-island scene we're given is one in which she continues to dote, staying up to feed Max chocolate cake when she's clearly falling asleep? You're welcome to interpret the movie as a simple mother's-love-conquers-all story, but that's an awfully simplified "bottom line" for a movie from Spike Jonze.
5 - Sally Annabella
Hi Dusty! Don't get me wrong, Freud would be proud! You did a great job pulling all of that out of there. Perhaps I should study Spike Jonze' work - if this is something he might do, purposefully. Maybe that is indeed what he was going for. Maybe he challenged himself. I was thinking that was your own interpretation and not as if you were trying to figure out what he may have been striving for. Perhaps he was trying to see how much he could get away with in a kids' movie. Maybe he's trying to stir up the pot and get some conversation going. Maybe he was just having fun with it! I'll check him out.