[Editor's Note: This review is by CL Atlanta's Curt Holman. You can check out more of his work here.]
Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers’ Where the Wild Things Are remembers something most adults have forgotten: A huge gulf lies between the simplicity of children’s entertainment and the complexity of actual childhood. Growing up may be a time of pure delight, but it also features stretches of agonizing boredom, sudden fright, occasional sorrow and general perplexity at the arbitrary nature of adult rules.
Most artwork aimed at children, even some of the great ones, grabs for the pleasure and maybe a pinch of terror, but seldom attempts to evoke the tangled youthful feelings that go hand-in-hand with the sense of the wonder. Where the Wild Things Are serves as a remarkable exception that grounds its visual splendors in bittersweet realism.
Being John Malkovich director Jonze and co-writer Eggers retain many images from Maurice Sendak’s archetypal picture book. Rambunctious young Max (played by a talented young actor named Max Records — really) wears an off-white wolf suit reminiscent of Ralphie’s bunny outfit from A Christmas Story and chases the family dog with a fork in an early scene. Jonze and Eggers provide the requisite feature film backstory with admirable economy. Max grows up as an imaginative, latch-key son of divorce with a working mother (Catherine Keener) and a neglectful teenage sister.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.