MOVIE • Where The Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are
By Manny Casillas | Editorial Assistant
There’s no Disney coddling here. To see Spike Jonze’s extraordinary adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s classic is to get lost in a world of untamed imagination. Sendak’s book was never afraid to nip at the darkness lurking beneath fantasy, nor does it moralize. Rather, it seeks to empathize with the emotions and feelings children are filled with. Jonze stays true to that unique spirit and, along with novelist Dave Eggers, manages to create something freshly fierce. They’ve taken Sendak’s book (10 sentences, 340 words) and expanded it beautifully. Newcomer Max Records is a revelation as Max, the nine-year-old son of a single mother, who ventures into the world of the wild things, creatures who represent the myriad emotions he can’t begin to understand. The wild things (voiced by actors like James Gandolfini) are stunning. Along with an amazing soundtrack from Karen O. and The Kids, “Where The Wild Things Are” is a movie defiant in its melancholy and its joy. Worst I can say is that it’s too much of a good thing.
