Review: Where the Wild Things Are
October 18, 2009 by admin
Filed under Movie News
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
First of all, this one is VERY different from the other WILD THINGS movies, and with virtually no nudity. But easily one of the best of the series. Second, I don’t usually go around reviewing movies made for kids, and I got a reputation to uphold and what not. But this is a movie of ferocious artistic purity. Whether you like it or not you’d have to be a numbnuts not to recognize it as a unique achievement.
This is the movie Spike Jonze has been working on for years, based on the famous Maurice Sendak picture book. You probly read about how Sendak asked him to do it, at first he turned it down, then he thought of an idea for it, they started making it, one studio dropped them, they moved to a different studio, continued making it, that studio freaked out when they started snooping around and found out there was no farting or Smash Mouth songs in it. Rumors circulated that they were gonna fire Jonze and start over or redo some of his scenes with CGI or who knows what. But he kept on going and they must’ve either got distracted by something on TV or decided he knew what he was doing. Somehow he got to the end and looked down and in his hands he was holding the movie he set out to make at the beginning. Except transferred into Imax. Nobody knows how it got there.
Mr. Jonze deserves a Congressional Medal of Freedom for pulling this shit off. In a genre where movies are always shaped around Happy Meal and doll tie-ins I swear he’s made a movie without a single commercial compromise or concession to Hollywood formula. He’s not trying to bullshit you or your kids, he’s tapping straight into a kid mentality, which doesn’t mean poop jokes and Hannah Montana references, it’s more primal. At times in this movie I felt like it was making me regress to being a little kid, remembering the simple joy of throwing things, breaking things, building things, making up stories, and also the feeling of being hurt by small things like mom or big sister won’t pay attention to you exactly when you want, so you go hide in your room and feel sorry for yourself. Max has those feelings and then Carol, a wild thing portrayed brilliantly by the voice of James Gandolfini, amplifies them to giant size. He represents the needy side of a kid, the one that feels sorry for himself and gets angry too easily (which leads to the much hyped make-kids-cry part of the movie when he briefly chases Max claiming he’s gonna “eat him up.” But don’t worry kids, he’s full of shit. He’s got no follow through on shit like that.) Carol is a character like I’ve never seen before – a monster who’s only scary because he’s so emotionally fragile you gotta walk on egg shells around him. They should try that in a Godzilla movie some time.
All of the wild things seem to represent different sides of Max’s feelings or things in his life. For example there’s a little goat 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 (like he feels about his older sister). They’re basically huge, hairy kids building forts and getting confused about things. They even have snotty noses. Max (both the character and the kid who plays him, Max Records) seems like a smart and imaginative kid, but not in some phony HOME ALONE way where he has clever quips and talks like an adult. No, he talks like a kid. His stories and games don’t make alot of sense, and involve lots of force fields and lava and shit. Very authentic.
I can’t imagine anybody else in the world would’ve done a “Where the Wild Things Are” movie and approached it remotely similar. Even a good director. Most people see a drawing of monsters they’re gonna go the heavy handed art director route, create a stylized environment for them to live in, show offy camera moves and a Danny Elfman soundtrack. Jonze did none of those things. Most of it is filmed handheld on location in Australia, just fields, sand dunes, woods and stuff.
In order to avoid that “how do you act when there’s not a real dinosaur chasing you?” question at junkets they built giant suits of the wild things. Only the faces are (flawlessly) digital, and I didn’t even really think about them being special effects. Of course doing it that way looks more real, but more importantly it helps the acting. It’s a real kid running around playing with the things in person, not faking it. And it seems more dangerous, because they’re so big, they seem like they could accidentally crush him.
So that’s what the movie is, and I think it should also be mentioned what it isn’t. Sendak fuckin lucked out, man. He pulled it off. I’m pretty sure I can hear Dr. Seuss blowing around in his urn now that this has been proven possible. I mean think about that HORTON HEARS A WHO movie, for example. I believe that’s the first Dr. Seuss feature film to look halfway decent, in fact they did a good job of turning his artwork into a three-dimensional world. Otherwise it has nothing at all to do with the poor bastard. They take the 5-10 minutes of story in the book and bury it in a bunch of unrelated wacky sitcom shit. The timid, loyal elephant character is turned into a Jim Carrey goofball that dances around standing upright doing celebrity impressions and cartoon sight gags and shit. No respect at all for the tone or spirit of the original story. That’s how bad Hollywood is at reading, they can’t even do it when there’s pictures.
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE doesn’t have a single drop of that bullshit. It expands on the book organically, not trying to shove it into movie and Saturday morning cartoon formulas, but just letting it grow naturally, keeping the same tone, mood and simplicity. Jonze is looking deep into the simple story and interpreting it instead of looking outside for other subplots to pile on top of it.
How is it possible that this movie was made with the voices of James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper and Forest Whitaker instead of Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen and Snoop Dogg? Huh? Can we give Obama credit for this? It seems like a miracle to me. You know what the trailer would’ve been like: Starts out real dramatic, Harry Pottery orchestral score playing as the camera floats through a beautiful CGI ocean, onto an island, into a forest. The sound of giant feet plodding through dirt. The camera comes to the unmistakable shadow of a large, horned monster. Then…
“Wild thing. You make my heart sing. You make everything… groovy.” The computer-animated wild thing leaps weightlessly in the air doing air guitar. Then a wacky record scratch and Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” comes on. And some sort of dated MATRIX reference maybe. Or American Idol. The wild things make little quips, puffs of smoke come out when they dart around waving their arms everywhere, and there’s jokes about cell phone minutes or 401Ks or something. Ha ha, because why would a wild thing have a 401K. Funny stuff.
The teaser poster: white background. A wild thing standing with his arms folded like a lost member of Run DMC, wearing Snoopy Joe Cool sunglasses. Max next to him, similar pose, backwards baseball cap, skateboard in hand. Below that it says “BORN TO BE WILD.”
You know this to be true. It’s much, much more likely that that would happen than what we got from Spike Jonze. It’s like that speech Dr. Nudity makes on Mars in WATCHMEN. Out of all the possibilites, for this to be the outcome is a miracle.
I know I’m saying more about what’s not in the movie than what is, but that’s the best way I know to describe it. Somehow it’s fantastical and naturalistic at the same time, a fantasy movie that seems to strip away all the artifice, all the bullshit. It throws away all the gimmicks and crutches you expect to see in a movie about this and replaces them with humanity, for good and bad. Through these monsters you have fun, you get scared, hurt, angry, you make friends, you forgive, you say goodbye. It’s funny, but not jokey. It’s weird, but not quirky. It’s gloomy, but not “dark.” It’s narratively simple, but emotionally complex. It’s a movie about big cool looking creatures but it’s more honest about life than movies that are supposed to be the real deal.
Let me cut to the chase: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a masterpiece. There’s nothing like it and if there’s ever anything like it again it’ll be a long god damn time from now. The movie is like a place that you go, and I can’t wait to go back. But it’s basically an art movie, it has no interest in pleasing everybody. That’s not some elitist thing, it’s just the truth – this is a movie where there are more feelings than there are plot points. Jonze said somewhere his model for the dialogue was John Cassavetes movies, and I don’t think he was talking about THE DIRTY DOZEN. Obviously some people got no time for a challenging kid’s movie, and those people will find this boring as hell.
It’s like you and I know THE LIMEY is fucking badass, but we probly have friends who’d fall asleep during it. And you wouldn’t show it to your mom. Doesn’t mean your mom is stupid, doesn’t mean THE LIMEY isn’t great. WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is the same way. Probly won’t make much more money than that thing with the gun toting guinea pigs, but I believe when everyone involved with that movie is dead and buried and not one person has thought of it in nine years many kids and parents will still be passionate about WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. That’s the trade off.
I mean, I’m not sure what other kid’s movie to compare it to. I haven’t seen ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS (either the squeakquel or the nutriginal). I have seen GARFIELD though (part 1 only), and in my opinion this is a better movie than GARFIELD. Just my 2 cents.
–Vern—
Source: aintitcool. com
Review 2: Where the Wild Things Are
Spike Jonze kicked off his career with skate videos and for the opening seconds of this, his career-changing film, he returns to his roots, shattering any expectations that he’ll mimic Maurice Sendak’s otherworldly tableaux by tracking Max on a shaky cam rampage through his home. It looks like a punk home movie, and it’s exactly what we need—it’s a reminder that Max isn’t just a spooky kid who goes berserker in a crane stance; he’s a sweaty, snotty, panting, aggravating animal whose legs (and emotions) pump faster than any adult’s. Jonze has spent five years fighting to bring his vision of the book classic to theaters, and beyond a few fumbles it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better. Adults will buy the bulk of tickets. Max’s hungry and threatening Wild Things might inspire some parents to leave the kids at home, and so deny their kids the shivery delight they once got from Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal when they were younger. (Junior will be sure to catch it on DVD.)
Sendak’s classic is about rage, frustration and empathy without tidying these themes into a moral. In ten sentences it mapped childish fury and invited us—but did not order us—to follow along. Like a kid throwing a tantrum, it’s willfully inarticulate. Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers give it words. Here, Max (Max Records, raw and great) is a lonely boy who’s being outgrown by his teenage sister (Pepita Emmerichs) and overlooked by his loving but exhausted single mom (the queen, Catherine Keener.) Max’s sister and mother have both reached that age where the problems of childhood seem small. To Max, every smashed snow fort is an outrage that he can only express through destruction, and after he’s burnt out his rage he’s left shivering, afraid and guilty. Jonze not only remembers the emotions of youth, he makes us feel them—Where the Wild Things Are takes place in a world where every interaction is fraught with landmines and, in an instant, playtime can turn to war.
The rules, or the unclear grasp of them, are the same in the land of the Wild Things, but the danger is heightened. Now, if Max screws up he won’t be spanked—he’ll be eaten. (Putting actors in 9-foot suits makes the physical tension real—when a beast casually throws an arm around the boy, we see Records struggle to remain standing.) After a nasty fight with his mother, Max arrives in their land and meets seven monsters, some of which share different pieces of his personality. Carol (James Gandolfini) is hot-tempered and passionate; The Bull (Michael Berry Jr.), an outsider; KW (Lauren Ambrose) is determined to prove her Independence; Judith (Catherine O’Hara) is suspicious; her mate, Ira (Forest Whitaker), is pacifying; Douglas (Chris Cooper) is brave and athletic; and Alexander (Paul Dano), the littlest by far, is ignored and despondent. (This is one case where I wish voice casts weren’t tied to stars—their modern, recognizable grumblings strip the mystery and majesty from the monsters.) Max and Carol’s instant bond helps the boy establish himself as their fearsome king. But as allegiances shift and affection gives way to apathy, Max is forced to broker peace between the squabbling seven and satisfy their demands for happiness, lest they turn him into a pile of bones. In short, he’s pressured to meet irrationality with empathy—just dessert for parents who’ve cursed their brats with “Wait until you have your own kids!”
Where the Wild Things Are is so patient and non-judgmental that you’re welcome to simply bliss out on the visuals. The artistic team has created marvels—everything feels dirty and hairy and real and full of grand obstacles (the way I saw our shag carpeted living room when I was a toddler). Jonze has captured youth. That youth is arbitrary and unhinged and totally focused on the moment means that Wild Things will frustrate people looking for a tidy blockbuster that’s mechanically driven towards bursts of applause. Away We Go, Eggers’ last script (written with his wife Vedela Vida), grasped the confusion of adults, but because it avoided Big Teachable Moments, it was dismissed as a trifle. I can also see that happening to Wild Things, but like the book—still going strong after 46 defiant years—it won’t slink away just because it’s hard to tame.
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Max Records, Catherine Keener, Forest Whitaker, James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara
Director: Spike Jonze
Screenwriters: Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers
Producers: John B. Carls, Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Vincent Landay and Maurice Sendak
Genre: Fantasy/Family/Action/Drama
Rating: PG for mild thematic elements, some adventure action and brief language.
Running time: 101 min.
Release date: October 16, 2009
Source: boxoffice. com
Review 3: Where the Wild Things Are
The opening sequences of Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are”—a live-action feature based on Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s classic—are sensationally good. Max (Max Records) is an angry nine-year-old boy: his teen-age sister has abandoned him for her friends, and his divorced mother (Catherine Keener) noodles on the couch with her boyfriend. The way Max Records plays him—with darting eyes, and lips pressed together in rage—the boy has no idea that anyone’s feelings but his own could be real. He builds forts in his bedroom and an igloo in the front yard. He wants to be enclosed in his own imaginative space, but he also needs to burst out and tear around, and, as Max crashes through the house, Jonze’s camera, bounding up and down stairs, stays with him and brings us as close to a boy’s impetuousness and egotism as we’re likely to get in the movies. The sequence has non-stop momentum and a juggernaut impact. Max’s mother tries to calm him down, but he bites her on the arm and runs out of the house, wearing a wolf suit, its pointed ears sticking up like two little knives. As he gets into a boat and heads for the open sea, the movie slows down and offers a different kind of wonderment: the dark skies and foamy white waves of a perilous journey.
Max arrives at a mysterious island, and Jonze, re-creating the monsters that live there, stays close to Sendak’s ineffably goofy style. The creatures are eight or even nine feet tall—snouted, horned, clawed, and furry, with huge heads and snaggleteeth that are as pointed as Max’s wolf ears. One is lionish, another goatish—each suggests a different animal, yet stays within a child’s fantasy of that animal. An eccentric menagerie, they are physically a little manic, but they’re also almost tragic in their uncertainty and their melancholy. They briefly think of eating Max, but, claiming magic powers, he shouts, “Be still!,” and they crown him king instead. “Let the wild rumpus start!” he cries, and they all run and jump, bash one another, gouge holes in trees, and fall down in a heap, with Max happily nestled among them.
Jonze, the director of the witty experimental features “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” was right to use actors in elaborate suits (designed by Jim Henson’s company), instead of animated figures, to play the monsters. The creatures sail through the air now and then, but most of their movements are weighted, rather than slickly virtuosic or glib. Only their faces, which have human-seeming eyes and mouths, were digitally enhanced. Though Jonze stays faithful to the creatures, he discards Sendak’s sombre green-and-brown backgrounds. The movie was shot in Australia, and the landscapes are fresh and bright; blossoms fall like a benediction through the trees, and a big hairy dog rambles on a ridge above a blank yellow-sand desert. The best scenes are peerless in their creative freedom and warmth: when Max sits atop the head of the monster’s nominal leader, Carol (James Gandolfini), holding on to the beast’s horns, and is told that the kingdom is his, it’s an ecstatic image of childhood aggression fulfilled. Max has lost his old family but gained a new one, and it pays him unlimited attention.
Then “Wild Things” runs into trouble. Sendak’s book was created for young children. The text is all of three hundred and thirty-eight words long; some of the drawn pages are rhapsodically wordless. But the movie has been designed for older children and adults, and the creatures, voiced by strong actors like Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, and Catherine O’Hara, never stop talking. As re-created by Jonze and Dave Eggers, who collaborated on the screenplay, they turn out to be a discontented and quarrelsome bunch. They have mysterious relations with one another—friendships, love affairs—and deep-seated grievances. They throw jealous fits or walk off in a huff, and we don’t know where the hurt feelings are coming from. The bickering peters out, then starts up again, and, after a while, the creatures all sound like peevish adults elbowing one another out of the way at the smoked-fish counter at Zabar’s. No one gets enough love or respect. In the book, the creatures are projections of Max’s imagination, but these beasts are all too real, and, appearances to the contrary, they aren’t wild things. They’re becalmed, even defeated. They build a twiggy fort that looks like a giant birds’ nest, and then don’t use it much. After their initial burst of energy, they fall into a funk, and the movie seems to be less about liberation than about futility. One of the things they ask Max when he becomes king is: “Will you keep out all the sadness?” The answer, it turns out, is no.
Jonze and Eggers have spoken of their desire to keep the film close to a child’s needs, but have they done that? Kids like danger, followed by a release from danger and a return to safety, yet the only danger posed by these creatures is that they will turn Max into someone as messed-up as they are. The filmmakers may have wanted to link Max’s anger to the creatures’ wounds, but the connection is fuzzy—Max isn’t the one who hurt them. I have a vision of eight-year-olds leaving the movie in bewilderment. Why are the creatures so unhappy? That question doesn’t return a child to safety or anywhere else. Of one thing I am sure: children will be relieved when Max gets away from this anxious crew.
Source: newyorker. com
Review 4: Where the Wild Things Are
What an impossible task Spike Jonze has set for himself, adapting one of the few works that can be confidently called “perfect.” Maurice Sendak’s illustrated children’s book Where the Wild Things Are is the tale of a little boy’s tantrum and his fed-up mother’s rejection, and of the dream that transports him over the sea in his wolf pajamas to a land of monsters that crown him king and help him act out all his rowdy, infantile impulses—until the rage goes out of his system, melancholy comes, and he longs to return home. The huge creatures are right on the border between stuffed-animal cuddlesome and mythically grotesque. Childlike fantasies in Sendak’s world are always double-edged: They can liberate you or eat you up—or both.
Jonze’s film is a different animal from Sendak’s. It’s tamer and more domesticated, and its characters come with a backstory. As with many compact works, to expand is to decompress and diminish. Jonze, who wrote the script with Dave Eggers, fills in too much of the life of Max (played by Max Records—his real name, fancy that), now a lonely casualty of his parents’ divorce who freaks out when his mom (Catherine Keener) gets frisky with a date (Mark Ruffalo). One alteration is unpardonable: Max dashes out of the house and into the woods instead of getting sent to bed without supper, so there are no bedroom walls melting away and no waves rolling in—one of the book’s most archetypal images. No warm supper awaits Max’s return. What can you say? Bad adapters, bad. But once the boy is in his boat being tossed on the waves, things go swimmingly. That’s when Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are begins to cast a spell all its own.
Jonze and Eggers’s most agreeable innovation is turning Sendak’s rather anonymous beasts into complex, conflicted personalities. They sit around quarreling, smashing things, making holes in trees, staring into space, and wishing for a leader. They’re like a counterculture commune after all the hippies and their woks have left, after the drugs have stopped working so well. And then comes little Max, who proclaims himself a king to keep them from devouring him. Max Records (I still can’t get over that name) has a mop of dark hair and a sweet face, but his Max is petulant and edgy. It’s a wonderful performance; you’d never know he was acting opposite nine-foot puppets.
If you’ve seen the previews, you know that the setting is real (it’s the rocky coast of Australia) and the creatures are decidedly not. The mix of an unruly landscape, a live boy, and kiddie-show fakery shouldn’t jell—or should jell only on the level of a Muppet movie. But it works like a dream. Instead of being bombarded by computer illusions, we’re allowed to suspend our disbelief, to bring our own imaginations into play. For all the artfulness, the feel of the film is rough-hewn, almost primitive. It’s a fabulous tree house of a movie.
There is CGI, but it’s largely used for the creatures’ expressions. Outside of Gollum, I’ve never seen facial movements so evocative. Jonze rehearsed the voice actors together instead of taping them separately (by way of comparison, Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres didn’t meet until the premiere of Finding Nemo), and they’re like a crack repertory company. Catherine O’Hara is Judith, who sounds like a whiskey-soaked biker momma; Paul Dano is Alexander, the woebegone little guy with ram horns who’s always ignored. James Gandolfini has tender, plaintive cadences (all New Jersey gangster inflection expunged) as Carol, the tempestuous lummox whose stringy-haired hippie-chick girlfriend K.W. (Lauren Ambrose) has left him. Carol needs a king, a firm dad, someone to direct his wayward energies. He’s the one who asks Max if he can “keep all the sadness away,” and Max says he has “a sadness shield”—a mistake in a world of such up ups and down downs.
I’m of two minds about how Jonze and Eggers go soft in the end. These wild things don’t turn carnivorous when Max wants to leave. They act more like the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, etc. But this isn’t Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, and the creatures aren’t projections of Max’s id. They’re a family, which is what this fatherless boy needs. They don’t eat their own.
Like The Blair Witch Project, the micro-budget horror picture Paranormal Activity proves that nothing is scarier than nothing. Think of a creak in the dark. You freeze. You wait. And wait. It’s the waiting that’s unbearable. What you don’t know can hurt you.
The perspective is radically limited: We see everything through the video camera of Micah (Micah Sloat), a San Diego day trader. After his live-in girlfriend, Katie (Katie Featherston), reports noises in the night and a malevolent presence, he decides to document the goings-on. And that allows the director, Oren Peli, his one genius setup. Micah places the camera in their bedroom with a view of the bed and door and dark hall leading to the stairway. The couple turns off the light and goes to sleep. The image is pale, greenish and white. There’s a timer on the screen: 1:32 a.m. and 40 seconds … 41 … 42 … 43 … Then there’s a low rumble, faint sounds of walking or running. Sometimes Katie and Micah don’t wake up—they watch the footage the next day. Or there’s a thud and Micah jumps up and grabs the camera and hurries into the hall, a little orb of light illuminating a corner or railing. Or he points the camera down the stairs into the darkness. A medium gives the couple the name of a “demonologist,” but macho Micah wants to take care of this himself. He yells things into the dark like, “Is that all you got?” We want to yell to Katie, “Call the demonologist now, and dump the asshole!”
Paranormal Activity is weakest when most explicit: A clear shadow or a door swinging shut dilutes the dread. But I’ve never seen a movie that so cunningly exploits our anticipation. Every time Peli cut to another bedtime and the timer appeared on the screen, I said out loud, “Oh, shit, here we go.” In the light of day, it’s all very silly and conventional. But of course we’re not talking about the light of day.
Sebastián Silva’s The Maid centers on drab, prickly Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), who has worked for a rich Chilean family for 23 years and starts to go loco when they want to bring in another servant to help her out. At its midpoint, the film could go either way: toward The Hand That Rocks the Cradle psychosis or something more hopeful and humanistic. It’s a testament to Saavedra’s tough performance that even with a happy ending, you wouldn’t want to leave her with your kids.
SOurce: nymag. com
Review 5: Where the Wild Things Are
An illustrated children’s book that consists of nine sentences and 20 pages does not immediately suggest a feature film adaptation. Nonetheless, Spike Jonze has fearlessly plunged ahead to weave whimsical movie magic to bring Maurice Sendak’s 1963 “Where the Wild Things Are” to the screen.
The story, as millions of children and grown children know, tells of a rambunctious boy, sent to bed without his supper, who then encounters fearsome-looking but surprisingly gentle creatures when his bedroom turns into a mysterious forest. The film does surmount one of its two difficult challenges: Through puppetry and computer animation, the filmmaking teams have successfully put a world of childhood imagination on the screen. Where the film falters is Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers’ adaptation, which fails to invest this world with strong emotions.
Children might enjoy the goofy monsters and their fights and squabbles, but adults likely are to grow weary of the repetitiveness. In the end, the book probably was too slender to support a 102-minute movie. Without a quest to propel the story, such as Dorothy’s journey in “The Wizard of Oz,” the movie turns into an afternoon-special with an easily digested moral that fails to grab youngsters by the collar and shake them up with an exciting adventure.
A viewer is encouraged to see that Max’s (Max Records) rough play with the family dog and his snowball fights with neighborhood kids are angry reactions to a home life that disturbs him. His single mom (Catherine Keener) must juggle demanding work assignments and a new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) while perhaps neglecting her impressionable son.
An older sister’s self-absorption and a science teacher’s declaration that one day the sun will die don’t help matters. Nonetheless, the boy is too much of a brat to elicit much sympathy. And his adventures with the Wild Things never captivate a viewer.
Rather than being exiled to his room, the boy, clad in only a wolf costume, runs away into the night. He discovers a sailboat that transports him to the faraway land of Wild Things, creatures that nurture childlike ambitions and grudges.
It is not long before he declares himself a Viking king. Swallowing anything the wee lad says, the monsters nominate him to be their king, too. He readily accepts and promises to keep them happy and safe. Max is about to learn the first lesson of a politician: Be careful about what you promise a potential constituency.
The monsters carry on like children themselves. They wish to sleep in piles of furry bodies, think and behave with a child’s self-righteousness and are swift to perceive any slight. The large costume suits, courtesy of Jim Henson Co.’s Creature Shop, achieve a remarkable semblance to the witty illustrations of Sendak (who as one of the film’s producers was heavily involved in overseeing the page-to-screen transition).
The Wild Things are overgrown dolls with expressive, feral faces and often lighter-than-air bodies. (Sendak reportedly based his monsters on family members studied intently as a child.) They rather like to bash things but are quick to realize that little gets accomplished by such actions.
The voice actors couldn’t be better. James Gandolfini plays the pack leader, Carol, who looks avidly for purpose in life and thinks Max might provide the key. Catherine O’Hara is the sardonic, pessimistic Judith, all mouth and one horn growing incongruously out of her nose; Forest Whitaker is her patient and possibly adoring companion, Ira; Paul Dano is a put-upon goat; Chris Cooper plays the birdlike, kinetic Douglas; and Lauren Ambrose is the aloof KW.
Virtually plotless escapades in monster land feature the building of a fort and a dirt-clod fight, all things that Max instigates without any thought about how these activities will fulfill his promises to the gang. They don’t, causing him to realize that “it’s hard to be a family.”
The Australian production takes huge advantage of the hills, sand dunes and shores of the outer Melbourne area to create the changeable landscapes of this other world. Cinematographer Lance Acord, Jonze’s collaborator on “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” superbly integrates the imaginative with the real, and K.K. Barrett’s design further enhances this “real” fantasy, a far cry from the studio-bound phantasms of old. A rock-pop score by Karen O and Carter Burwell tries too hard and at too loud a pitch.
Source: hollywoodreporter. com
