Where the Wild Things Are: A Monstrously Mediocre Children's Movie
Spike Jonze had a pretty impeccable record, from directing Christopher Walken's triumphal dance in the video for Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice," to producing MTV's transcendently stupid pain-porn Jackass, to his magnificent collaborations with Charlie Kaufman on Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. Nothing about that remotely suggests that he should adapt a children's book, though. He does a great job of evoking the weird and making it normal, but he's never quite pulled off believable emotion. Ultimately, that's what sinks Where the Wild Things Are.
It's not just Jonze, though. The entire creative team is bizarre. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, best known for fellating her mic at live shows, composed the soundtrack; Dave Eggers, best known for a fictionalized memoir (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and a fictionalized biography (What is the What), adapted the 10 sentences of Sendak's original work into the screenplay; and Lance Acord, the mood lighting-proficient cameraman who has worked almost exclusively for Jonze and Sofia Coppola, is the cinematographer. Max Records, a child actor who has appeared in music videos for Death Cab for Cutie and Cake, is the star.
All in all, it's a team much better suited for MTV or a Brooklyn poetry reading than a live-action adaptation of a children's picture book. The tonal dissonance that results is about what you'd expect, though no less disappointing. The movie's shorthand for emotional resonance is unresolved conflict; whenever Eggers decided he needed to up the stakes, he simply had one character yell at another. Oscar-winners Chris Cooper and Forest Whitaker are chiefly used to mumble; Emmy-winners James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara are chiefly used to nag. These wild things look as though they could tear Max from limb to limb, but they sound like brooding community theater stereotypes.
The one thing about the movie that truly works is its look. Like There Will Be Blood, this is a movie that would have worked far better as a silent film, stripped of its dissonant score and distracting script. The wild things look right, and so does Max in his monster costume and crown. The castle he instructs the monsters to build is stunning, and so is the intricate model one of the monsters builds. The film's visuals are worthy of Sendak's original, if nothing else is. This may be one movie best watched in an airplane with the headphones off.
Rating: 40
Crossposted at Remingtonstein.
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Molly Magid Hoagland: Wild Thing
Where the Wild Things Are is a quirky and heartfelt film that makes Max a hero for hipster grownups and über-cool kids. But Max's truest soul mates are little kids.
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I thought it was great and kind of interesting... granted at over 40 I may be slightly out of the target audience but then I still like the same films now I did when I was about 10.
Do you have kids? If so, are they little, or old enough to see this movie? There has been a lot of talk of this film being too scary for kids- what it really is, I thought, is SAD. And not a lot of movies for kids deal honestly with sadness or emotions like regret.
My son is 10 and he was mesmerized by it. This was not a movie for small children- and any parent with half a brain cell who did a little online research before the film should have known that- but for older kids, it was about how you can imagine things and that might make it seem better for a while- but you always have to go back to what's really going on in the end. My son did not get bored during the entire movie, and has actually requested that I download the soundtrack to listen to in the car. He was familiar with Karen Oh from playing Rock Band as a family, and recognized her voice right away.
He said "Max's life kind of sucks, and it isn't really going to get better, is it?" I agreed and he said " But he still should go home to his mom, because he can't fix everything by himself even if he wants to."
I think he 'got' the movie just fine.
"The movie's shorthand for emotional resonance is unresolved conflict; whenever Eggers decided he needed to up the stakes, he simply had one character yell at another. Oscar-winners Chris Cooper and Forest Whitaker are chiefly used to mumble; Emmy-winners James Gandolfini and Catherine O'Hara are chiefly used to nag. These wild things look as though they could tear Max from limb to limb, but they sound like brooding community theater stereotypes."
Did it escape you that the film is about a 9-year-old kid trying to internally work out his own emotional turmoil? How sophisticated should the wild things have been?
You're still under the assumption that this was a children's movie, even after watching it? It's about kids, not for kids. Or do you think the 6 - 10 year old demographic is big on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade Fire?
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I'm quite sure that demographic isn't big on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade Fire. Nonetheless, Karen O hired a children's choir for the soundtrack, and there were a lot of kids in the audience, with parents, when I saw the movie. I'm guessing it was jarring for them, but probably not as jarring as it was for me.
It seems to me that the issue isn't if a movie is 'supposed' to be for kids. As a parent, I take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for my child - a concept most Disneyfied brainwashed parents seem to have never heard of. Anything with a kid's name or logo on it and 'It must be perfect to take Junior too!" Doesn't matter if Junior still wets the bed from fear everytime he sees Scooby Doo- just take him anyway!
Any parent could easily have found out what this movie was like and made an informed judgement call about whether or not their child was old enough and mature enough to handle it. A lot of people are just stupid and did not do that, sigh, and you were forced to sit through a movie with them.
As far as musical demographics, I say again that my son has heard Karen Oh on RockBand and heard both the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Arcade Fire on my iPod in the car. Does that make me some kind of hipster? I don't necessarily think so. Does my son have eclectic tastes in music and doesn't listen to Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers- yes, it does, and I'm glad.
Why SHOULDN'T a movie have an original and edgy soundtrack just because kids might hear it? They don't have to be doomed to non-talented pre-pubescent TV show kids trying to sing, you know?
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