If I could choose two words to describe Where the Wild Things Are, those two words would be "relentlessly depressing." Spike Jonze's vision is uncompromised, and he has created a serious movie for children, which is great. But what he hasn't done is made a movie as magical, powerful, and fun as Maurice Sendak's classic 1963 storybook. An attempt is made at capturing the anger, joy, disillusionment, and happiness that Sendak so strongly conveyed, but something's missing.
At first, though, you'd think differently. There are inventive scribbles over the company logos, and as Max (Max Records) terrorizes the family dog, gets hurt in a snowball fight, and yearns for the attention of his mother (Catherine Keener), there's real emotion involved. This one section alone has several moments that'll put your tear ducts to work. Jonze begins an insightful character study of one lonely, angry, attention-starved little boy, and it prepared me for one of the best movies of the year.
Unfortunately, he doesn't follow through. Max feels threatened by his mom's boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo), so he gets up on the kitchen table and demands that she feed him. When she yells at him to get down, he bites her. Everybody freaks out, prompting Max to run off and sail to an imaginary world in which giant monsters roam. At first, Max is scared. Some sort of rift has developed between the monsters, and Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini) has started destroying all of their homes. But when Max convinces them he can "keep the sadness out," they declare him king. His first order of business? "Let the wild rumpus start!"
This is when the movie lost me. The monsters are, to be sure, stunningly made. Their bodies are suits crafted by the Jim Henson Creature Workshop, and their faces are digitally rendered. Taken in combination, this creates the splendid effect that what you're seeing are real, living, breathing wild things. It's too bad that they're so poorly written. The book is so short that we never get to know the monsters, and all we get to see is the wild rumpus. If the monsters in the book are anything like the monsters in Jonze's and Dave Eggers' screenplay, then that's probably for the best.
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