Where The Wild Things Are: The Movie

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind

and another

I'm pretty sure everyone in our family can recite Where The Wild Things Are from cover to cover. Each girl has gone through about a year-long period where she wanted to read nothing but Maurice Sendak's popular book. Normally, that would drive me crazy, but Where The Wild Things Are is brilliant. I love the poetry of his words, the humor in the pictures, and the way Noni shows her "terrible claws" whenever I read that line.

When I found out that the movie was being written by Dave Eggers (What is the What) and Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), I knew it had to be good. Last night, I finally sat down with the girls and watched it.

From the first scene, Jonze and Eggers capture the feel of the book precisely, which means that it is wild, scary, angry and sweet. I love that they made it that way and didn't try to Disneyfy such a powerful book, but it probably shouldn't be shown at a six-year-old's birthday party.

Of course, they had to add some more to the plot of the short picture book to make a full-length movie. Max now lives with his divorced mother and disinterested teenage sister, and is frustrated that his family has fallen apart and no one else seems to care. When, after biting his mother, he runs away and arrives on the shore of The Wild Things, he finds that their family struggles to stay loving toward each other as well. Carol, the monster with the horns and reddish nose, plays the role of Max in his world, worrying about the discord of his friends and family. At one point he and Max discuss a model world that Carol made:

Max: Did you make this?
Carol: Yeah, yeah.
Max: It's very good.
Carol: We were gonna make a whole world like this. Now, everyone used to come here, but you know... you know what it feels like when all your teeth are falling out really slowly and you don't realize and then you notice that, well, they're really far apart. And then one day... you don't have any teeth anymore.
Max: Yeah.
Carol: Well it was like that.

Kids movies don't often address divorce, loneliness, mortality, anger and sadness, but Where The Wild Things Are addresses them all and does it well. I remember reading an interview with Sendak where he talked about how the publisher wanted him to change the end of the book to read that Max's supper was "still warm". Sendak refused and the lines "and it was still hot" remain. The movie, like the book, doesn't cool things down to suit all audiences. But, snuggled together on our couch with Noni's stuffed Max and stuffed Wild Thing, Evie, Lucy, Noni and I all gave it a thumbs up.