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Some good books were just never meant to be turned into movies. Sadly, you can now add Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic “Where the Wild Things Are” to that list.
Just so you know, I don’t have fond memories of Maurice Sendak’s book. Not for myself as a child or for reading it to my own son when he was little (the book I remember is “The Wheels on the Bus”- now that was a masterpiece-anyway).
So I didn’t have any bubble to burst going into the movie.
“Where the Wild Things Are” is 37 pages and only 338 words. Granted this doesn’t give very much material to base a full-length film on. Writer/director Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers had their work cut out for them by fleshing it out into a screenplay for a live action movie. That must have been quite a task on their part. That being said however, the end result does not really work.
The story centers around a kid named Max. Max is a boy with problems and that’s putting it mildly. He seems to have no friends and has a very short fuse. Only his mother seems to like him and even then not all the time. Max, has a weakness for resorting to violence when things don't go his way.
This kind of behavior reaches its peak when Max's divorced mom brings her boyfriend home for dinner, which puts already stressed-out Max so out of wack he bites her on the shoulder. Hard! No it's not an ad for Ritalin!
Terrified at the mess he's gotten himself into, Max runs away and magically ends up on an island (the film was shot, on the southern tip of Australia).
SideNote: In Sendak's book, Mom sends Max (who is only 5) to bed without supper and there he begins his magical journey.
“That very night, in Max's room, a forest grew and grew and grew, until his ceiling hung with vines and walls became the world all around."
And that’s where I think the movie takes a wrong turn. By taking us outside the house, the director Spike Jonze somehow takes us away from Max's imagination. The magic disappears before the boy's trip begins. In Jonze's version, that mystical bedroom moment disappears: Max goes to the fantasy—it doesn't come to him.
Here he meets six wild things, who seem to represent different sides of Max's feelings or things going on in his life. For example there's Carol who represents the needy side of a kid, you know the one that feels sorry for himself and gets angry too easily.
A little goat named Alexander is as sensitive as a beast can be, who thinks nobody listens to him or pays him enough attention, and a girl named K.W. who everybody thinks is cool and wants to impress everybody around her (muck like Max’s older sister and her friends.)
Judith is the voice of doom and gloom while her pal Ira just wants to get along. The bird-like Douglas likes to get things done.
They're all a little cruel and destructive, ready to eat Max just because he's small and available. But Max, who is good at making up stories for his mother, convinces the creatures he has secret powers and is declared King of the Wild Things.
The movie can be a little depressing at times; the problem is the way screenwriters Jonze and Eggers have turned them into neurotic adults with dysfunctional relationships. To hear them talk among themselves is to feel like you've stumbled onto a group therapy session involving unfunny, mopey characters from Woody Allen movie. It's not a good feeling. More like “Where the Whiny Things Are”
Max does utter the book's signature line, "Let the wild rumpus start," but what he should have said was “Let the group grief-therapy begin.” They are all filled with a low self-esteem issues, feelings of jealousy and fear. Emo-monsters if you will.
“Will you keep out all the sadness?” one asks Max after he's named King. What the heck kinda dialogue is this? Who was this movie made for? Adults? Children?
I doubt even older children will know what to make of lines like "happiness is not the best way to be happy." Come to think of it, I’m not even sure I get it!
SideNote: More than a year ago test screenings reportedly reduced some children to tears. Needless to say, rewrites were ordered.
This how I analyzed it, Max turns into a parent himself, frightened and worried when his creatures get out of control. Unfortunately, 90 minutes have to go by before Max, like Dorothy in the “Wizard of oz” before him, finally realizes "there's no place like home." it's time for him to sail home he spends a lot of his time not really being sure what he's doing.
Obviously this was Spike Jonze personal pet project, who completed the screenplay three years ago (!) and has battled the movie studio (Warner Bros after it was dropped by Universal Studios) to let him keep his original version intact.
Y’know sometimes you are better off with 37 pages and 338 words, in the end I just wish Jonze had left it on the bookshelf where it belonged.
Wild Things, you do not make my heart sing.
Rated PG
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Posted by oxyjen on Oct 20, 2009 |
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