Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Spike Jonez dared to make a “children’s” film around the concepts of emotional pain, frustration, and disappointment in family & relationships, it worked and I want to thank him for it. Based (loosely) on Maurice Sendak’s beloved 1963 children’s book of the same name, Where the Wild Things Are is not a conventional children’s movie. I think the film provides an access point for children to rougher emotional issues, kind of ‘your child’s first existentialist movie’ (if you don’t count WALL-E). There has been some debate about how suitable this movie is for young children, if they can take it (as it is a little intense at parts). The two children I saw come into the theater with their mother (ages about 4-6 or so) seemed to sit through it fine, rarely talking, however its hard to even guess at an emotional reaction (though I suspect if I’d seen it at that age I would have been profoundly affected).

The Wild Things, big CG enhanced Muppets our protagonist Max (Max Records, who’s so natural he hardly seems to be acting) meets and is briefly king over in the ‘fantasy’ run-away sequence that constitutes the bulk of the movie, are complicated balls of fuzz and abandonment issues. It is through the Wild Things, whose larger then life qualities, and tendencies to wear their emotional insecurities close to the surface, that Max is able to gain a deeper sense of empathy and a better understanding of the emotional dynamics of others in his own ‘broken home’ (Max’s dad, divorced from his mother, is an unseen presence throughout the film). The film has a wonderfully mature and honest way of speaking to children on an emotional level, and that is to be appreciated when so much of kids entertainment is entirely surfacy. But the movies other accomplishment is how it can bring that child’s perspective home to adult viewers, and mabye even serve as a sort of emotional catharsis. I expected this to be great, and because of those standards perhaps wasn’t quite as emotional affected as I wanted to be, but it was affecting and moving in a reflective way, and combining that with its visual triumphs you have something defiantly worth experiencing in a theater. See it.

Also, good to hear Lauren Ambrose's voice again, under-used, under-used.