Yesterday I went to see the highly anticpated “Where The Wild Things Are”. I have been so pumped to see this movie (hasn’t everybody been?) since viewing the ultra emotional trailer that for some reason had the power to make grown men and women burst into tears. My friend insists that it’s soley because of the song by the Arcade Fire that accompanies it. So naturally I went into this movie with my expectations pretty high.

Did it deliver the goods?

The story is simple in the movie as it is in the book. Max, played by Max Records who lives right here in Portland Oregon, is a lonely child dealing with a divorce, his mother’s new boyfirend, his sister ignoring him and teachers telling him that the sun is going to die someday. One evening he gets into an argument with mother and in the thick of it ends up biting her. In a rage he runs off into the night and finds a small boat and sails across the world to an island, where the wild things are.

Once there he stumbles upon six amazing monsters which he proclaims himself the “king” of and then runs, jumps, fights, sleeps, builds forts and talks with for the remainder of his time (the rest of the movie) on the island. Learning much about himself from these creatures, who I assume must be some different peices of his personality, he decides perhaps home was not such a terrible place after all and sets sail back.

Now first let me say that the best part of this movie is obviously the Wild Things! Jim henson’s Creature Shop did an amazing  job with the monsters as did all of the amazing actors who voiced them. I have always wondered why they never used creature suits and added a little CG to their faces to make their facial expressions just a little more articulate. Well now they have. They could have completely ruined the film, as they normally do now days, with completely CG charaters co-existing on screen with real actors. So cudos for  Spike Jonze for choosing this method and I’m sure popularizing this style of movie monster creature for the future.

Secondly the visuals alone on the island and off were beautifully done and left you with that melancholy feeling inside. But did we really expect anything less than that from Mr. Jonze?

 Sounds like an absolutely perfect film right? Some may disagree with me but right about mid film I started to get quite honestly a little on the bored side. But wait, there’s cool looking monsters running around and I LOVE monsters. So what’s wrong I wondered. Well the original book version only has I think nine or ten sentences in the whole thing and not too many more in pages. I think honestly if this movie was a half hour shorter it would have been fantastic. It seemed at points to drag on and towards the end I was getting pretty ready for Max to wrap it all up and get his ass back home already! It’s no wonder he missed home, the island where the wild things are seems like it gets pretty old pretty quick. Once the sheer awe and charm of the iconic monsters wears off it seems as if there’s really not much left to be said about this beautiful looking film.

All in all I guess I was really hoping for much more. I guess part of me wanted a modern day Neverending Story or Dark Crystal. But perhaps it was my fault to expect so much from a film made of a book with such little source material. Or maybe it was Spike’s fault? In the end though I really can only blame one thing for my feelings of let down from this movie, the amazing trailer they released that yes, for some reason made grown ups cry…. 

Oh yeah check this out, Disney was planning a Where the Wild Things Are animated film in 1983. Early CG…