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Reviews Counted:180
Fresh:127
Rotten:53
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: Some may find its dark tone and slender narrative off-putting, but Spike Jonze's heartfelt adaptation of the classic children's book is as beautiful as it is uncompromising.
Rated: PG [See Full Rating]
Genre: Childrens
Theatrical Release:Oct 16, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $62,650,379
Synopsis: Innovative director Spike Jonze collaborates with celebrated author Maurice Sendak to bring one of the most beloved books of all time to the big screen in “Where the Wild Things Are,” a classic... [More]
Starring: Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener
Director: Spike Jonze
Jonze's choice to once again drain the color from the film and use hand-held camera amidst the surreal is what gives Where the Wild Things Are a strange naturalism different from all other films that tend to be aimed at children.
The book is about anger, while the film is as much about sadness. Here is a film broken-hearted over the messiness of the world. It is sad, and beautiful, and true.
When it's over you just want to sit there and sigh for awhile then go home and have a cup of tomato soup and a grilled cheese and be tucked into bed and cry yourself to sleep. As long as mom is nearby.
Odd pacing nearly trips up Wild Things.
In many respects, a creative triumph. The film is visually stunning, and the writing is equally fresh.
What stays with you is the sadness. There's an almost unbearable undertow of melancholy in director Spike Jonze's awkward, arty adaptation of Maurice Sendak's 1963 picture book.
Jonze and Eggers do an admirable, and at times alchemic, job of transforming the slim volume into something decidedly weightier in terms of plot without sacrificing the essence of the book's focus on the darker edges of childhood
The fact that Jonze and Eggers are revealing so much of themselves in this emotionally crabbed tribute to the unending hell of childhood is itself reason to see the film.
They're all militantly dreary, like a Prozac-starved version of the seven dwarfs. (There's Lugubrious, Needy, Fretful, Disconsolate, Remorseful...)
Charming, affecting and heartbreaking. It could have gone wrong in any number of ways, but never does
An intimate epic, Jonze's film is nearly unique among modern kid fare for its total lack of condescension to the core audience.
It's all very clever and very creative. It's intellectually stimulating. But how much of it actually had any emotional impact?
Better not set foot, hoof or paw on this isle of pain.
A near-perfect live-action adaptation ... Where the Wild Things Are is a brilliantly conceived and artfully realized translation of Sendak's beloved story.
For grown-ups, Jonze's exploration of Max's imaginary world is a wonder.
It's less ABOUT a kid and more about BEING a kid.
A work of genuine imagination and intelligence that doesn't try to ram the same old feel-good platitudes down our collective throat.
Regardless of whether or not the film means anything at all, it is a triumph of visual imagination, production and set design and costuming.
Too dark for children; too dull for adults
Where the Wild Things Are is the least fantastical fantasy and the most raw, honest, personal and magical film about childhood angst since ... ever?
October 18, 2009:
Box Office Guru Wrapup: Audiences Eat Up Wild Things
Three new releases hit the multiplexes while one indie sensation expands nationally hoping to strike gold and shake up the establishment. Leading the charge is the family film... More...
October 15, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Where the Wild Things Are Is A Wild Rumpus
This week, we've got a wild rumpus (Where the Wild Things Are, starring Max Records and Catherine Keener), a legal skirmish (Law Abiding Citizen, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard... More...
October 08, 2009:
Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze's oft-delayed kiddies movie finally makes it to the big screen!
More...
October 05, 2009:
Spike Jonze and Max Records Talk Where the Wild Things Are
You've still got to wait a little while for it to reach theaters, but in the meantime, you can get a small taste of what to expect from "Where the Wild Things Are," thanks to a... More...
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