When was the last time you read a book? You, right there, stuck to your computer screen, when was the last time you actually picked up a book - made from paper, with a cover, and a classy picture of the author on the back – and read? Well, for those of you who are currently hanging your head in shame, it is okay. It's time for you to feel better about yourself and tackle Maurice Sendak's whopper of a novel, 'Where the Wild Things Are'. This children's book is about as simple as it gets: Boy puts on wolf pajamas; boy chases dog; boy gets in trouble and goes to bed without dinner, leading him to runaway to an imaginary world full of monsters (due to starvation or frustration, we may never know). The end. It may be only be 48 pages, including only 10 sentences (that's 338 words), but think of how smart people will think you are when they hear you say, “I liked the book better than the movie”.
Now, I can't even begin to
fathom how to make a book with only 10 sentences a 2 hour feature film. Fortunately for everyone out there, I didn't do so well in Directing 101 and chose not to take on such a feat. However, uber-talented director Spike Jonze is such a badass, he didn't even think twice when Sendak himself asked him to adapt Where the Wild Things Are to the big screen. Jonze and Sendak teamed up with screen Dave Eggers and brought this famous children's book to life, not leaving out one detail of little Max's imagination. They did a great job of allowing the child in you get lost in the woods with these giant furry beasts donning horns on their noses and enormous beaks instead of mouths. On that note, let's just say, thank God for Jim Henson (who created the 6-8 foot tall wild thing costumes) and his grand infatuation with puppets. He brought us so much more than an inappropriate
love affair between a pig and a frog.
This film could have been a hot, monstery mess, if not for the incredible music. As you can imagine, with so little plot to the original story, you are gonna have a montage or two. Normally, I loathe the montage, especially when there are three or four in one movie (ah-hem, Twilight), but most of the time, the audience wasn't even aware they were watching one. Apparently, as Google and The.Well.Set tells me, Karen O and the Kids dominate the soundtrack and kick ass doing it. Each song is so different, yet so cohesive with the rest of the film, you forget that you are actually watching giant puppets build a fort out of sticks. And you are loving it.
I can easily say it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing films of the year. Hey, it may not make you think too hard, but not every time I hit the theater do I need to solve a massive CIA crime or figure out who ki
lled Harrison Ford's family, or try and decide which aliens are capable of melting from water and which are, for some unknown reason, invincible. But for that hour and 50 minutes during Where the Wild Things Are, I was so lost in the woods with Max and his furry friends, it only bothered me twice that I was watching a computer generated puppet cry.
Oh, and FYI, Carol is a guy.
Bottom Line: If you don't mind a little imaginary fun, then, as King Max says, let the wild rumpus start!
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