Where the Wild Things Are

This book meant so much to me as a child growing up. It helped me let my imagination run wild. As excited as I am to see the film, be sure to remember the book is always better and popcorn is much cheaper popped in your microwave. Head on to the library and see what the fuss is about. Here's an article about the story:


This article originally appeared in SLJ's Extra Helping.
By Kent Turner -- School Library Journal, 10/15/2009

Filmmaker Spike Jonze takes the delicate story line of Maurice Sendak’s picture book Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963) and keeps it simple, never losing focus of the lonely and angry Max (Max Records), the boy at the center of this classic tale. But while the id-loaded book focused on the power of the imagination, among other things, the film centers more on the friendship between Max and the unruly Wild Things.

Max first appears like a feral animal, in his ubiquitous wolf costume (it looks exactly like it does in the book), running around on all fours, roughhousing with his dog. Scolded by his mother for biting her, among other out-of-control infractions, he runs out of the house, jumps into a sailboat, sails across an ocean, and discovers an island. There, crouching in the wooded darkness, he spies on a family of six giant creatures, including the two-horned, nine-foot-tall Carol (James Gandolfini) ripping to shreds his wooden hut. He’s an immediate kindred spirit who matches Max mood swing for mood swing, and the beasts allow the boy into their circle, only if he promises he can keep out the sadness. They thereby appoint him King of the Wild Things.

Jonze and his coadaptor, novelist Dave Eggers, have added personalities to the lumbering, snotty-nosed beasts (all voiced by name actors)—one is sarcastic and suspicious, another timid and overlooked. Although the lair of Wild Things less resembles Sendak’s jungle settings and more a desolate lunarscape, the creatures—created by the puppetry of the Jim Henson Creature Workshop—all could have sprung to life from the pages.

Jonze and Eggers stretch the story to an inch of its life and do away with conflict for most of the film, until the creatures realize that Max isn’t really the magic king he said he would be. The film’s sentimentality, especially when Max leaves the Wild Things to return home, is arguably the film’s biggest departure from the book’s straightforward, fast-paced narrative.

Without a smirk, the film stands out from the many pop-culture-laden, wisecracking studio franchises. Most likely for baby boomers, it will conjure both memories of the book as well as the ’70s kids show H.R. Pufnstuf—though for the digital age.