If you ever laughed uncontrollably while engaged in a childhood snowball fight, built intricate forts out of your grandmother’s afghan blankets, or made up the rules to complex playground games while the game was still being played, then Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are is for you. Actually, even if you never did those things, but still have a strong nostalgic attachment to Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book, the movie is still yours. What’s less clear is whether it is geared toward children still engaged in all that creative play and discovering the book for the first time. Regrettably, I’m no longer eight and can’t say for sure what a child’s reaction to this movie might be. I suspect — or maybe, rather, hope — that kids will respond to it despite the fact that it isn’t paced or presented like most children’s movies, and will grow to love it more and more as they grow older.
Sendak’s book is a deceptively simple exploration of the emotional and imaginative life of children, a simple ten sentence tale of a boy imagining an exotic world of his own while banished to his bedroom without supper. The bulk of this fantasy is taken up by wordless drawings of young Max, dressed in hooded wolf pajamas, engaging in a wild rumpus with a gang of odd animal hybrid monsters who are convinced that he is their king. Jonze and his co-writer, the novelist Dave Eggers, treat the scarcity of narrative as an opportunity to create a work that is both true to the spirit of the source material while something entirely original.
Max’s monsters, in literary form simple manifestations of childish anger and playful joy, are now given names, personalities, and a social structure for their little tribe. They are sad and anxious creatures, given to brief bursts of ebullient – and sometimes destructive – physical play, and in tremendous need of both structure and freedom, plus plenty of attention and cuddling, lest their unfiltered jealousies and tantrums get the better of them. So, they’re much like Max himself, the rambunctious child of a loving but often too busy single mother, with an older sister who ignores him, and a shortage of friends.
