Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

Starring: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini
Director: Spike Jonze
Country: USA
Genre: Fantasy, Family

The children & family genre is overstuffed with bubblegum movies that it makes a film like Where The Wild Things Are almost impossible to determine how it will play with its [supposed] target audience. This is probably the most personal children’s film I’ve ever seen. While it is told, brilliantly I might add, through the eyes of a child, it seems like it goes one step further and is told through the eyes of an adult looking through the eyes of a child, (Being John Malkovich?) It’s smart, it’s scary, it’s heartwarming, its tearjerking. The entire movie had me feeling like I had the heart of The Grinch when it swells up too big for my chest. It’s truly a spectacle. By the time the credits were rolling I was already thinking fondly back on it. Oh, and the score by Karen O and the Kids = amazement.

8 Comments

• By Chase, October 16, 2009 @ 5:21 pm

  I concur. Completely.
• By this guy over here, October 16, 2009 @ 5:39 pm

  I concur with your concurrence.
• By KZ, October 30, 2009 @ 9:21 am

  See, I felt a bit like the Grinch with the small heart. This movie hit home for me mostly in the bad way where I reflected on what an ungrateful brat I had often been as a child, and why that probably stemmed directly from a sense of isolation (by the time I was seven, we had moved to five different houses in four different cities).

  For me, the movie was just as much about learning to appreciate love as it was about the guilt, shame, and sacrifices that you have to make and recognize to get there. Being a kid can suck, but having to grow up sucks worse.
• By this guy over here, October 30, 2009 @ 9:36 am

  It’s interesting that it hit you so similarly yet so vastly different from how it hit me. Oddly, as you say it made you realize what at brat you were, I have that feeling at a massive amount of other films. But being an only child, I connected with his loneliness and isolation and I felt a sense of salvation from his immense imagination… and then watching that salvation crumble as you grow to understand your surroundings.

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