LOGO : Site title

Where the Wild Things Are offers up a bit of a conundrum for the movie-going parent. Director Spike Jonze's expansive take on Maurice Sendak's 1963 kids book classic is less a movie for kids than it is a movie for adults who want to remember what it was like being kids.

It's a beautiful and imaginative film, as one would expect from Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, working here with prolific McSweeney's editor Dave Eggers on the screenplay. They do a great job fleshing out the sparse story of the original book into an inventive and adventurous feature length film. While most book-to-film adaptations suffer because so much of the source novel must be shorn away for reasons of running time, the Wild Things film is able to greatly expand the story of a little boy who makes himself the king of a group of rowdy monsters into a richly resonant exploration of the confused, contradictory and sometimes violent emotions that lurk within the adolescent heart.

One big change from the book is that Jonze and Eggers give the main character Max a poignant backstory that draws deeply upon the audience's sympathy and provides a stronger narrative inspiration for the plot. The book Max seems to be an energetic boy who simply misbehaves, while the movie Max is portrayed as a lonely and sensitive boy who feels neglected by his older sister and craves more attention from his hard-working single mom, played by the always wonderful Catherine Keener.

(copyright (c) 2009 Warner Brothers)

The first few scenes of the movie deftly set up Max's loneliness and the way he uses his powerful imagination as a way to escape it. When a seemingly small conflict with his stressed-out mother suddenly blows up into a serious emotional meltdown, it's difficult not to identify with Max's confused helplessness and his mother's frantic inability to calm him down. As a newish father, the shots of a distraught Max, dressed in his wolf costume, blindly running off into the night were incredibly frightening, as were the subsequent ones of his terrified mother running barefoot through the streets desperately searching for him. Maybe I'm just being a little too sensitive, but this scene might to a little intense for younger kids.

Max disappears into the woods and comes across a sailboat, and soon he's off sailing to the titular island where the Wild Things dwell. At this point, the story begins to echo the traditional kidlit device where the main character discovers a magical otherworld wherein all the characters he meets represent a psychological aspect of himself, as in books like Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz. In this case, Max finds a group of giant lumpy creatures who accept the boy as the king of their dysfunctional sort of family. The wild things successfully bring Sendak's designs to life through a combination of men in suits, large scale puppetry and CGI, with voices proivided by the likes of James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara and Forest Whittaker.

This is where the second parental caution comes in. The Wild Things really are wild things. In the book they're shown as menacing when introduced, but once Max names himself king, they're no longer threatening at all. In the film, we first see them as shadowy monsters in the night, lit only by fire, as Gandolfini's character, Carol, rages through the forest destroying their homes in a fit of confusion and anger. Max metaphor alert!

Even after Max is befriended by the Wild Things, they still project a continued sense of threat and menace. Some of the Wild Things are keen on eating the boy, and there are some glimpses of a pile of human bones, evidently the picked-clean remains of previous kings. It's from this pile that Max gains his kingly crown and sceptre. The Wild Things are also very fond of rough-housing, including a rowdy game where the sole objective is to to bean everyone else directly in the head with heavy clods of dirt. Parents of easily impressionable children, please take note.

As an adult, I wasn't particularly upset by the movie's darker tone. It's a refreshing change of pace from a lot of the over-jubilant Treehouse-approved material that passes for children's entertainment these days. Then again, as a child I was always naturally drawn to weirder and darker things. I don't think that I would recommend it to most children under five, and I would probably suggest that as a parent you should watch it yourself before showing it to kids younger than eight. You'll be able to decide if your children would enjoy it or be too scared.

I went with a group of friends to a 6:30 weeknight show and the audience was almost all adults. There was one couple sitting behind us with their daughter, who I guess was around 6 or 7. She was a bright girl, and she seemed excited to see the film, and we checked with her to make sure that we weren't blocking her view of the screen with our heads. Throughout the movie, I could hear her reactions. It sounded like she was enjoying it for the most part. and whenever all the grown-ups laughed at a grown-up joke that she obviously did not understand, she would loudly laugh two seconds after everyone else did, eager not to be left out. However, as the movie got darker, and Max's fantasy kingdom begins to fracture due to anger, confusion, depression and betrayal, I could hear her quietly wimpering and her parents gently consoling her. But she was a trooper and stayed to the end. I wanted to ask her what she thought of it, but her family had left once the lights came up, while the movie nerds and I stuck around for the end credits.

I look forward to picking up the DVD in a few months and I hope there is an in-depth making of documentary that details the decade or so it took for Jonze to bring the book to the screen. I know I'll enjoy revisiting the movie from time to time as Jack grows older, as a reminder to me to always try to keep in mind what is going on his mind, and to do my best to help him with his own Wild Things. I will, however, definitely hold off a few years before introducing him to the movie. At two years old, he loves the book, and doesn't seem troubled by its themes or images, but I think that the potency of the movie's visuals might be a little too intense for him right now, plus I don't need to give him any ideas about throwing clods of dirt or running away in a wolf costume.

I find it such a strange coincidence that next month, Wes Anderson, director of Rushmore and the Royal Tenenbaums, will release his stop-motion animation adaptaion of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. What are the odds that my two favourite American auteur filmmakers would be releasing kids moves based on two of my favourite kids books within a month of one another? Perhaps someone can convince David Lynch to adapt Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumb or John Carpenter to film There's a Monster at the End of this Book.