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Review of Where the Wild Things Are
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© Warner Bros.
"The book is better than the movie." It's a cliché because it's uttered so often but unfortunately it's often true. A book has the luxury of taking as many pages as it needs to expound on character development, plot and story whereas a screenplay is usually kept to 120 pages or less. There's bound to be some sacrifice. But when a movie is based on a book that consists of only ten sentences, the shoe would be on the other foot at that point, right? For Where the Wild Things Are, this ended up not being the case.
Who hasn't read Where the Wild Things Are? It's a staple among children's literature and it resides in the soft spot of the heart for many people well into adulthood. Maurice Sendak's book has remained a classic since its release in 1963 so an adaptation was inevitable. Because of the cliché mentioned in the first paragraph, there was much groaning and furrowed brows over said adaptation. When the first images and trailer were released, however, it caused much excitement and justifiably so: it looked incredible.
Where the Wild Things Are isn't an entirely bad movie but it's not entirely good either. The best part of this film are the Wild Thing costumes made by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Director Spike Jonze wisely made the choice to forego using CGI (except for their mouths) as this makes them seem real and it helps you buy into the environment he creates. In another way, the Wild Things are also the most disappointing part of the movie. Screenwriters Jonze and Dave Eggers made them manic depressives, gave them weird hair cuts and the soundtrack is mostly Karen O and Arcade Fire music. Essentially, the Wild Things are a bunch of emo-hipster kids. It was embarrassing to watch the characters of a culturally significant book that has transcended generations reduced to an annoying cultural footnote.
I would be remiss if I left unmentioned the fact that having James Gandolfini as the voice of one of the Wild Things is extremely distracting. I couldn't not picture Tony Soprano every time I heard his voice. If you want to know where the wild things are, look no further than New Jersey (thank you, Sam).
As for the story and ultimately the film itself, it's exactly like a child's imagination: while vivid and vast, it really goes nowhere. After watching Where the Wild Things Are, it feels like it works best in its original form, when it employed brevity.
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