November 4, 2009

Where the Wild Things Are - $9



Where the Wild Things Are is a book I loved as a kid, it's not a complex book, in fact I believe it's only 10 sentences long, so the movie had to get creative and inventive and in my opinion they pulled it off.

Where the Wild Things Are, the movie, is about a young boy named Max. Max doesn't have a lot of friends and like a typical child he gets a little carried away with his childish wild side from time to time. One night after an arguement with his mom Max runs away and sails to a far away island where he meets a group of strange monsters that make him their king. Max's rule of the island starts out very well but he begins to see the ugly side of the monsters after a long time there and he heads back home to his relieved mom.

The monsters each seemed to represent a different kind of childish behavior and you'd expect that to lead into some overt moral to the story, but it doesn't. Max seems to have learned a bit about himself by the end but not in any kind of neatly wrapped up way. This was a story that was simply about childish behaviour without a lot of judgement attached and to frankly, it was refreshing in that it didn't spoon feed it's audience with an obvious message. This is an understated and rich story that reminded me of being a child the entire time I watched it.

This movie captivated me with the visuals and the dialogue. The pre-monster portion of the story is told well but it's really the time in the land of the wild things that makes this movie great.

I've heard critics saying this is too dark and subtle for kids but I think they underestimate kids. I recommend this one no matter what your age.

$9 and a 'Watch It' for sure.

4 comments:

Trev said...

"This is an understated and rich story that reminded me of being a child the entire time I watched it."

My thoughts exactly. Great film.

Do you think each monster represented someone in his life? I wasn't sure if one was supposed to parallel his mom, sister, sister's boyfriend/friends etc...

Jon Coutts said...

Intriguing

Unknown said...

Completely disagree...it is two hours of my life I can't get back.

Anonymous said...

Thank yo for your review. I never know there is so much psychology involved in this film. I am going to see it as soon as I can. More over Max Records won this year the awards for Leading Young Actor for this film , so it has to be good.