Movie Review: Where The Wild Things Are

Spike Jonze's much anticipated adaptation of children's book "Where The Wild Things Are", finally hit the theaters Friday October 16th. I was able to catch an early early show at 12 am (depends how you look at it, it was the late late show on Thursday night) and absolutely loved it. Like any movie there are some things here and there that were not perfect, but overall the movie nails the essence of the story.

For people who grew up with this book, this story holds a special place in their hearts. So this was a tough task for the director, however I think the simple narrative does a lot of justice to the book. Obviously converting a 30-40 page book to an hour and half long movie will require filler scenes and periods where not a lot happens, but the beautiful cinematography, costumes, music (by Karen O) and the lovely dialogue makes you overlook the slowness.

The lead, Max, is a young boy with a wild imagination and some serious anger issues. One evening he's being insolent with his mom and in a fit of anger runs out of his house and gets on a boat and ends up on this island which is the land of Wild Things. He ends up being their king and how his presence on the island and his relationship with them affects their life and his own life is the crux of the story. There are some big lessons in this story and the movie subtly touches on them. Overall what I liked about the movie was that even though its a fantasy movie, it's very realistic in it's tone. It walks a fine line between being preachy and turning into Chronicles of Narnia (nothing wrong with that kind of movie, but I was happy it didn't go that route).

If you are looking for a very different take on kids movies, this could be what you are looking for.