[Jonze has] achieved with the cinematic medium what Sendak did with words and pictures: He's grasped something true and terrifying about love at its most unconditional and voracious.
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10/16/09
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Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
68
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Reviews Counted:37
Fresh:25
Rotten:12
Average Rating:6.5/10
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: $75,698,188
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
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Reviews for Where the Wild Things Are
Top CriticWild Things, you do not make my heart sing.
10/16/09
Top CriticIntellectually interesting, visually arresting and filled with invention, there's just one crucial thing Where the Wild Things Are is missing: wildness.
10/16/09
Top CriticSpike Jonze, we salute you.
10/16/09
Top CriticDirector Spike Jonze gets that Max's subsequent journey to the far-off island of the wild things is nothing less than an odyssey into his mind.
10/16/09
Top CriticSome very good books were just never meant to be turned into movies. Sadly, you can now add Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic Where the Wild Things Are to that list.
10/16/09
Top CriticWhere the Wild Things Are is audacious in its refusal to be reassuring, which makes it hard to love, but also hard to dismiss.
10/16/09
Top CriticIt's a joy for thinking moviegoers of any age. It doesn't seek to "keep out all the sadness," yet neither does it wallow in gloom. Instead it presents childhood as a journey filled with things both wonderful and fearful, and ultimately all of the mind.
10/16/09
Top CriticWhere the Wild Things Are may not be a great film for children (or, at least, most children). But it is something rarer still: a great, and unsparing, film about childhood.
10/15/09
Top CriticThe film is lacking as a whole -- it's individual moments and scenes that make it worth seeing.
10/15/09
Top CriticJonze's ideas, visual and otherwise, spill out in a faux-philosophical ramble that isn't nearly as deep as he thinks it is; at best, it's a scrambled tone poem. Even the look of the picture becomes tiresome after a while.
10/15/09
Top CriticWhere the Wild Things Are is a fiercely innovative film with surprising texture and nuance. It captures the joy and exuberance of childhood without shying away from its very real pains and woes.
10/15/09
Top CriticWhere the Wild Things Are honors the book in every imaginable way, and in ways no one could have imagined until Spike Jonze and his collaborators came along.
10/15/09
Top CriticSometimes you are better off with 10 sentences than tens of millions of dollars, and this is one of those times.
10/15/09
Top CriticWhere the Wild Things Are is an alternately perfect and imperfect if always beautiful adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s book.
10/15/09
Top CriticFor all the money spent, the film's success is best measured by its simplicity and the purity of its innovation. Jonze has filmed a fantasy as if it were absolutely real, allowing us to see the world as Max sees it, full of beauty and terror.
10/15/09
Top CriticIn an era glutted with sanitized, prefabricated, computer-generated kids' stuff, this is an experience of sophisticated cross-generational appeal. It digs deep into childhood's bright, manic exuberance and also its confusion and gloom.
10/15/09
Top CriticIt’s a qualified pleasure, now, to say that the movie is not a disaster -- in fact, parts of it are miraculous -- and that it is still, very much, a Spike Jonze movie.
10/15/09
Top CriticThe movie is a wild thing, and that’s not such a bad thing at all.
10/15/09
Top CriticWith Sendak's blessing, and with the aid of writer Dave Eggers, who teamed on the screenplay, Jonze has transformed the iconic picture book into a satisfyingly moody, melancholy, madcap live-action romp.
10/15/09
Top CriticLatest News for Where the Wild Things Are
December 11, 2009:
The Effects of Where the Wild Things Are
Spike Jonze's eagerly-anticipated adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are was initially supposed to use entirely practical effects, but the director soon... More...
December 07, 2009:
Exclusive: The World of Where the Wild Things Are
It has taken Being John Malkovich and Adaptation director Spike Jonze more than five years to bring Where the Wild Things Are to the big screen. Maurice Sendak, the writer and... More...
November 22, 2009:
Win A Signed Where the Wild Things Are Poster
It's one of 2009's most anticipated films -- director Spike Jonze's adaptation of Maurice Sendak's kids' classic, Where the Wild Things Are -- and it's almost, at long last,... More...
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...
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