Since it has been awhile since I last posted I figured I would skip the end-of-summer movies I saw (My Sister's Keeper, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, etc.) and skip to the beginning of fall.
I was really excited to see this movie, especially after seeing the trailer sometime last spring. My wife (she's really cute) and I decided to go see this movie at midnight and it was quite an experience.
The movie is based on a children's book that only has like ten words in it, so you wonder what they're going to do. Director/Writer Spike Jonze took some liberties with the story (including making it nearly two hours long) and succeeds incredibly well. Now I need to clarify a few things. First of all this movie is weird, the dialogue is odd and the plot is jumpy. For these reasons a lot of people were put off by it. I LOVED it. The reason being that all of these "inconsistencies" were intentional. Spike Jonze knew exactly what he was doing. Sometimes movies fall flat because of problems like these, but Where the Wild Things Are uses them very well.
The plot is pretty simple. Max lives with his single mother and older sister. He feels left out because his sister is starting to hang out with boys and his mother is doing the same. Since he's left behind Max starts to act out. One night after a fight with his mother Max runs away, finds a boat and travels to an island where the Wild Things Live.
The Wild Things are led by Carol, a passive aggressive monster with abandonment issues. He is upset over his (girl)friend, KC, leaving. Max steps in and becomes the king of the monsters. The rest of the story revolves around his trying to help the Things build a perfect city where they can all live together. But Max faces his own problems of having to grow up too fast and be a leader too soon. He wants to stay with the Wild Things and be their friend, but he also has to lead them and he learns quickly that in order to do that he has to be the grown up. This moment of realization came for me when Max and Judith get in a shouting fight and Judith tells Max he's not supposed to do that. She tells him he's supposed to be better than that. A great (albeit weird) scene.
As I said, the plot is jumpy and the dialogue odd. Even with these unorthodox storytelling methods I found a lot of ways to connect with this story. To me each of the Wild Things is an aspect of being a child. There's Alexander (Paul Dano), the shunned one, Judith (Catherine O'Hara), the know-it-all, Douglas (Chris Cooper) the loyal friend, etc. Each of the Things is me. And I'm betting they're you too, even if you won't admit it. And they're each Max, which is why he gets to be their king and control everything, because it's his imagination.
The plot jumping around did not bother me in the least. That is probably because I have the mind of a child and this movie basically is Max's mind. Anyway, the point is I connected with and understood this movie very well. So if you're still connected to your inner child, or you want to get re-connected with it, see this movie. If you end up not liking it, you can't say I didn't warn you.
Rating: 50 Wild Rompuses.
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