Where the Wild Things Are Review

   Reading the picture book Where the Wild Things Areis a fond childhood memory. When I heard they were making a movie based on this children's classic, I was anxious with anticipation for it's creation.  When I heard that Spike Jonze (director of Being John Malkovich) would be the director, I was even more excited. The commercials made it look excellent. Before the opening day, I was already hearing great things about it. Some friends who had seen it opening weekend used the words "moving," "heart-warming," "emotional," and "meaningful" to describe the family film. So, I must say, that I had great expectations for this movie.

   Where the Wild Things Are, a film based on the classic children's picture book by Maurice Sendak and directed by Spike Jonze, stars a character named Max, played by Max Records, who is over active and has a wild imagination, but lacks in courage and angers easily. After acting out and lashing out at his mother, played by Catherine Keener, Max runs off and sails to an island where these strange creatures live and gets into mischief and wild fun. Voices of some of the "Wild Things" are James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker and Catherine O'Hara.

   I was so excited as I walked into the movie theater with my child to see this film. Where The Wild Things Are started so slow . . . slow . . . slow. . . waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . Then, the boy was obnoxious. My husband kept on wanting to lean over to my son and let him know that the boy was displaying unacceptable behavior. There should be a disclaimer for the parents explaining the bratty-ness of that boy. The fact Max got away with the poor behavior without consequences was despicable! The way Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers wrote out the script to make it two hours was poor, poor, so poor.

   I was waiting for the movie to give me an emotional connection and nothing! No laugh, no tear, nothing that "moved" me "to" my "core," as many were saying. In fact, it was so disappointing, that my husband kept shifting in his seat. The more and more I watched, the more and more disappointed I got that the screenplay absolutely butchered this classic children's novel! The meaning the book beautifully brings across to children was practically non-existent in the movie.

   I was speechless walking out of that movie. We would have walked out 20 minutes into the movie, if it weren't for my son wanting to see it to the end. My husband and I even found ourselves explaining to our son that Max displayed poor behavior and that we expect him to behave way better at all times than that Max does.

   Were the creation of the "Wild Things" neat? Being built by the geniuses at Jim Henson studio, so absolutely! The character effects were interesting, cute, fun and impressive, but that doesn't make up for the terrible script. I get so disappointed when an FX or action movie is lacking in script writing effort. I feel it absolutely wastes the cost of the movie production when there's no decent script to work with.

   We happened to have free tickets we wanted to use and thank goodness for that because I would have gone to the ticket window and requested my money back. Where The Wild Things Are is such a poor movie that it was a waste of two hours to watch and a waste of money to produce.

   Boo! . . . And I was soooo looking forward to it's theater release!