Where The Wild Things Are

Disappointing film adaptation from Spike Jonze Discuss this article

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The slim narrative of Maurice Sendak’s much-beloved children’s book is stretched out like Silly Putty in Spike Jonze’s disappointing film adaptation. The problem isn’t that Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers adhere to the tale’s simplicity – young hellion Max (Max Records) sails across the ocean, lords over a group of magical creatures and returns home for supper – so much as they distort much of Sendak’s core emotional truths via rough-’n’-tumble junior Jackass spectacle.

It’s certainly true to Max’s character that he improvises his way through life, face-first somersaulting at every turn. But as Records plays him, he’s little more than a freckled fount of contrivance. Max’s fantasyland isn’t much of an improvement. There are numerous exotic locations, yet Jonze and cinematographer Lance Acord film them with a deadening sameness – all flattened vistas and haloing sunsets. This isn’t the world of a fertile imagination. Instead, it’s a lifeless playground.

The Wild Things themselves are eye-catching creations that unfortunately lose their grandeur the minute they begin speaking in the voices of James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper et al. There’s a disconnect between what we hear and what we see; the true soulfulness of Sendak’s parable never quite emerges.

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