Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
Well, the book is great beyond qualification. The movie takes the basic ides of the book and stretches it very far into an hour and forty minutes, and it's sometimes wonderful, but there are a lot of parts that need patience, or just complete submission. It's too long, period.
The basics are this--a wild kid named Max leaves his slightly dysfunctional family and ends up in a make-believe island where friendly monsters reside. And he talks them into becoming their king. The family interplay among the monsters echoes the routines of regular people (and there are some direct echoes of Max's real family). It's kind of a cozy film, with very nice animal/monster characters you can totally relate to, especially in a kind of warm Jewish-American family kind of way (in the best sense, not the caricatures, but the kind of families that maybe the author and screenwriter and director is familiar with). It's not animated, but clearly some kind of special effects are at work to fit the characters together.
If you are a Six Feet Under fan, and a Claire Fisher fan, the voice for the slightly rebellious (of course) female monster is the same actress, Lauren Ambrose. And there are other great voices from great actors, too, like Forest Whitaker and James Gandolfini.
The deepest parts of the movie are quite touching and probing--asking in fact about loneliness, or the end of the sun, or trust. Big stuff for little kids. But it works. It's cute and subtle at the same time.
Of course, the big lesson has to do with Max's real family, left behind. And this gets a fast resolution that is perfect because we know it's coming, somehow, and we're ready for it. And if our interest is in the monster land, our sympathies are with mom, and how life will get back to being okay after all. In some ways it's a brilliant, great movie--the attitude, the family dynamics, the basic story--and in other ways it's just too much too thin. You'll see.
Well, the book is great beyond qualification. The movie takes the basic ides of the book and stretches it very far into an hour and forty minutes, and it's sometimes wonderful, but there are a lot of parts that need patience, or just complete submission. It's too long, period.
The basics are this--a wild kid named Max leaves his slightly dysfunctional family and ends up in a make-believe island where friendly monsters reside. And he talks them into becoming their king. The family interplay among the monsters echoes the routines of regular people (and there are some direct echoes of Max's real family). It's kind of a cozy film, with very nice animal/monster characters you can totally relate to, especially in a kind of warm Jewish-American family kind of way (in the best sense, not the caricatures, but the kind of families that maybe the author and screenwriter and director is familiar with). It's not animated, but clearly some kind of special effects are at work to fit the characters together.
If you are a Six Feet Under fan, and a Claire Fisher fan, the voice for the slightly rebellious (of course) female monster is the same actress, Lauren Ambrose. And there are other great voices from great actors, too, like Forest Whitaker and James Gandolfini.
The deepest parts of the movie are quite touching and probing--asking in fact about loneliness, or the end of the sun, or trust. Big stuff for little kids. But it works. It's cute and subtle at the same time.
Of course, the big lesson has to do with Max's real family, left behind. And this gets a fast resolution that is perfect because we know it's coming, somehow, and we're ready for it. And if our interest is in the monster land, our sympathies are with mom, and how life will get back to being okay after all. In some ways it's a brilliant, great movie--the attitude, the family dynamics, the basic story--and in other ways it's just too much too thin. You'll see.