Review: Where The Wild Things Are

4/5

When a movie is as built-up as Where The Wild Things Are, it’s difficult to approach it without preconceptions as well as misconceptions. Especially when said movie is based on a sparsely written children’s story that had a significant impact on several generations of children, many of whom are now adults of varying ages that expect you to treat the story – and by extension, their childhood – as sacrosanct. Don’t go changing the way I remember things! My childhood isn’t mutable! Grrrrr!

With that in mind, it’s inevitable that many former children will walk out of WTWTA feeling somehow cheated or misled. I was not one of those people. Nor was my 12 year old niece, who on the drive home declared ‘That is possibly…no, it *is* now my favorite movie OF ALL TIME!’. Of course, you can’t really go by her, as she’s a touch fickle about these kind of things. Then again, she *is* a child, so her opinion on a movie that has ostensibly been labeled as a kid’s movie must count for something, right? She should at least be capable of identifying whether this movie was for her or not (her opinion – it was).

And thus we come to what likely divides most folks’ feelings on this movie. Is this a movie for kids? Is it a movie for adults? Is it a movie about being a kid? Is it appropriate for kids? Is it too deep for kids? Is it too simplistic for adults? At the very least, it appears that’s where most reviewers/critics are splitting. Whether they’re representative of the rest of us is a subject up for debate, I’m sure. But the questions themselves are valid. I’m not convinced it’s a movie targeted at either, but rather at both (or everyone), which might be where some of the confusion is coming from. There’s always a risk when making a movie for adults and children that you’ll end up failing to please either. But for me, they’ve most definitely succeeded.

There’s a scene early on in which Max’s teacher – rather too enthusiastically – spells out the life and eventual death of our sun. You can see the fear that takes over Max’s face as he looks out the window and imagines the sun dying out, gobbling up our solar system – and all of us – as it goes. It reminded me of a moment…well, a series of moments when I was roughly his age, and all the talk at that time about nuclear proliferation (it was the tail end of the Cold War, after all). There was a point where it all sort of came together in my head, and I considered the possibility of a nuclear attack. It was a moment that was truly filled with dread. There were times when I didn’t think about it after that, of course. It’s not as though I tried to dwell on it. But it would come back up from time to time, sometimes even keeping me up at night. It was terrifying. It’s a difficult concept for an adult, let alone a child, to process.

It’s scenes like that (and many more) that manage to capture the fears of childhood incredibly well. Actually, let’s rename that – not the fears, but the uncertainty. Take another scene early on, when Max decides to throw a tantrum when his mother has her boyfriend over. He’s angry, but he’s not entirely sure why or what to do about it. So he jumps on the table, runs around growling in his signature animal outfit, and ultimately ends up biting her when she tries to restrain him. A different sort of horror comes over his face as he immediately recognizes he’s done the wrong thing, but he runs away because he still doesn’t know what the right thing was. He only knows he’s upset. I can’t speak to everyone’s childhood experiences, clearly, but my own was full of moments like that. I can think of any number of things I did that I’d later have loved to take back. I even had a biting episode, though it was with my sister, not my mother. How exactly do you take back a bite?

And really, that brings us to the heart and soul of this tale – there are no simple fixes. When Max finally arrives in the land of the Wild Things, he takes it upon himself to fix their problems by declaring himself king. At first it does seem to bring everyone together, but Max can really only distract them from their troubles, not make them disappear, and the distractions don’t last long. Soon enough, the creatures are back to the petty disagreements they started off with, except now the blame is being placed on Max. It’s at this point that Max begins to realize that maybe some problems are more difficult than he thought.

Don’t let all of that mislead you, however. This is also a film full of scenes of giant, furry monsters – that appear to be wearing striped Christmas sweaters as fur – running around, throwing raccoons at each other. They punch holes in trees, engage in wild rumpuses, slide down hillsides, howl at the sky, sleep in a pile, talk to Owls and build forts. It demonstrates both the peaks and the valleys of childhood, but never once glamorizes them. This isn’t a film designed for adults that never want to grow up; rather, it’s a film that serves to reminds them that childhood is more complicated than they’d probably like to remember. And it’s also a story that kids will be able to identify with, even if they don’t pick up on every angle. Though I think they’re a lot smarter than any of us give them credit for: My niece told me that she liked how ‘the monsters were parts of [Max], and also the people he knew’. Of course, she has a history as quite the Wild Thing herself.

Tags: Movies & TV, where the wild things are