Movie review: Where the Wild Things Are
Yeah, I know – how can you make a movie about of a 20-page childrens’ book that has one sentence per page? Well, I’d call it faithful if it had everything the book had:
- Same visual style.
- A troublesome boy getting in trouble.
- Escape to the forest.
- Some monsters.
- The boy dominating the monsters.
- A meal.
And it does have all of that, plus of course a lot of embellishments to blow it out from five minutes to movie length. Add to that that it was co-directed by the author of the original book, and I’d have to say I can’t cry bastardization.
Overall, not bad. It’s very much not my kind of story – life-lesson and growing-up stories have never grabbed me – but for what it is it’s good. It was never clear to me what the moral of the story was (even in book form) but I think I get it now – at the end Max was supposed to have gained an appreciation of the importance of having a family, and how hard it can be to manage one. I’m still puzzled about how Carol and KW’s relationship was relevant to Max’s home life, but maybe it wasn’t supposed to be.
