Review: Where The Wild Things Are

Last weekend I FINALLY got around to seeing Where the Wild Things Are - a movie I had been anticipating for many, many months.  Ever since I saw the stills for it last March, I knew this movie was a must see, and in the eye candy department it certainly did not disappoint.  Everything is beautifully crystal clear, and it's a pleasure to lose yourself in Spike Jonze's mythical world of wild things.  

Over the past few weeks I've read a lot of reviews of this movie, I suppose in an attempt to live vicariously through those who had seen it to make up for the fact that I had not.  Many reviewers seem to insinuate that it's somehow wrong to turn a 20-page picture book with very little text into a 90 minute movie.  Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it at all.  Every idea has to start somewhere, and the book itself is at least as much about the illustrations as it is about the written story.  Thus with its largely visual focus, you can hardly say the movie misrepresents the book.  Where the Wild Things Are is a story about imagination, and the ability of humans, particularly children, to recreate dream worlds when they feel out of place in the real one - to escape to an alternate reality that caters to their every whim.

Which brings me to the thing that really annoyed me about this movie: the main character, Max, is a terrible child with whom I found it very difficult to sympathize.  I could deal with him being a little self-absorbed (hey, what kid isn't?) but to throw a tantrum and bite his poor mother when she has her boyfriend over for dinner after an awful day at work?  And trash his sister's room just because she wants to hang out with her friends instead of him?  Max looks to be about ten years old, certainly old enough to know better than to misbehave in such immature ways.  A re-reading of the book reminded me that Max is similarly awful in the original version (duh - he's a "wild thing"), but I still found it to be a bit excessive.  Then he goes to the land of the wild things, is crowned king, and is allowed to do whatever he wants.  Even though he proves to be an ineffective king, the wild things still love him and are upset when he leaves.  THEN to top it all off, when he returns home his mother is so relieved he's back that she gives him an enormous piece of chocolate cake for dinner, forgoing the vegetables Max was complaining about having to eat earlier.  The last scene features Max scarfing down the cake at the kitchen table while his mother sits next to him, head in hands, looking thoroughly exhausted and defeated.  

Is it wrong that I wanted to physically harm this child?  Maybe so, because I could not find a single review that mentioned this aspect of the film.  I realize that the whole point of the movie is for Max to be self-indulgent, and that such self-indulgence is part of the magic of childhood.  Yet as visually beautiful as this film is, my main feeling upon leaving the theatre was dread at the thought of ever having children!