Hell is other people, existentialist Jean Paul Sartre liked to say. The new movie Where the Wild Things Are, director Spike Jonze’s audacious adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s children’s story, seems to argue that — despite a heavenly wildlife setting — hell is middle-aged actors whining about their feelings as they walk around in furry costumes.
Give it this much: The PG-rated Where the Wild Things Are, which opens Friday, looks unlike any other movie that’s come down the pike in recent memory.
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Co-scripting the picture with David Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), Jonze reunited with key collaborators from his previous movies Being John Malkovich and Adaptation — costumer Casey Storm, composer Carter Burwell, production designer K.K. Barrett and cinematographer Lance Acord — to conjure an organic-feeling fantasy world reliant on puppetry and costumes rather than CGI trickery.
The film also benefits from young Max Records. Starring as child hero Max, the 12-year-old actor lends an energetic presence to the story. Like most child actors, he’s adorable, but unlike many youthful talents, Records never mugs or recites lines mechanically.
And yet Wild Things ‘ adventure only takes flight in fits and starts. In place of intrigue and resourcefulness, the story turns on alternating currents of anger, angst, aggression and depression.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
The opening scene sets the tone as a handheld camera shakily follows a screaming Max as he chases his dog through the house. We soon learn that Max is starved for attention and hypersensitive to boot, bursting into tears when his older sister’s friends trash his snow fort. (Uh, what did he expect? Max attacked them with snowballs).
Max tries to cheer up his single mom (played by Catherine Keener) to no avail. Fits of rage ensue and Max flees the house in a wolf-style pajama suit.
A few blurry camera moves later, Max finds himself steering a sailboat to an island inhabited by a grumpy bunch of beasties squabbling around a fire in the forest. For Max, it becomes a case of be king or be eaten. Once the boy tells the furry ones a whopping lie and convinces them he’s meant to rule, the going gets tough.
Yes, there are a few exhilarating forest races and fort-building sequences (underscored by anthemic pop tunes sung by Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer Karen O). But the action gets dragged down repeatedly by a succession of group-therapy sessions in which the fantastically realized creatures turn out to be sad, lonely and envious — just like regular old humans!
The lead complainer is the snaggle-toothed Carol, voiced by James Gandolfini (HBO’s The Sopranos) with plenty of space for disappointed sighs.
Carol’s morose because KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose) has left the tribe to hang out with the mysterious Bob and Terry. The other creatures (voiced by Catherine O’Hara, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker and Michael Berry Jr.) have problems of their own, articulated in the kind of somber timbres heard on TV commercials for antidepressant medications.
Especially when viewed on a jumbo IMAX screen, the island adventure turns captivating whenever the characters quit whining and cinematographer Acord draws back for a long shot of the creatures lumbering majestically against the horizon.
Little Max perched on big Carol’s shoulders is a very vivid image. But cool tableaus and gorgeous sunsets do not a transcendent movie make.
Where the Wild Things Are ultimately is not wild enough. Despite their extraordinary costumes, these ordinary characters fail to transform Max’s journey into something approaching magic.
WIRED Energetic child hero; intricately detailed costumes and picturesque landscapes create distinctive look.
TIRED Critters are sad, lonely and depressed.
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