Big-name actors’ salaries and endless retakes may have contributed to the mind-boggling production costs. This film cost $80 million and looks like $8000. Earlier this year, District 9 was filmed for $30 million and looked as if it cost $150 million. Jonze’s imagination swims in banality-shot after nauseating shot of sunlight gleaming through treetops drab palettes of brown, tan and bone-dry wood in contrast to the book’s lush environments. As artistic are his purported intentions, Mr. Here, close-ups zig, zag and jitter so much that one wonders if the next edition of the book will come equipped with a vibrating motor inside. Sendak’s book was that one could quietly revel in the illustrations’ varied textures and colors. Shaky, hand-held camera work is overused to exhaustion, as if we’re in a war film. Sendak’s book into a full-length feature with a complete, cogent narrative that progresses from beginning to end.Īdditionally, the cinematography is catastrophic. Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers as screenwriters aren’t exonerated from the duty to adapt Mr. If the beginning with mom (Catherine Keener) and her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) is meant to set up a thesis of parental neglect, the unsatisfying conclusion doesn’t bookend it properly. No groundwork is laid to make you care about the characters, of Max’s imagination, who carry conversations ostensibly adult in tone, perspective and scope-inaccessible to the inexperienced mind of a child. and Carol’s friendship-the genesis and nature of which is left unexplained. No character development takes place, save perhaps the rekindling of K.W. No dialogues or actions connect from scene to scene. Instead, he says, it’s about childhood as interpreted by adults. Jonze envisions the furry beasts as embodiments of Max’s recalcitrant emotions, but to what end? In an HBO “First Look” feature this week, the director argues the film is not meant for children. This is his freshman stab at writing a feature-length motion picture with the help of counterculture author Dave Eggers. Spike Jonze’s previous collaborations with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ( Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) coupled fantastic imagery and narrative. What child wants to be around bitchy, manic-depressive monsters? as the quiet Bull and the talented Catherine O’Hara as the brooding Judith-is largely self-absorbed, save for Ira (Forest Whitaker). (Lauren Ambrose) translates into entire thoughts the solitary hoots of two daffy-looking owls regarded as sages, though it’s intimated nobody has any idea what they’re saying. What follows is a total collapse of coherent storytelling-disconnected scenes of running, jumping, throwing, thrashing, and destroying interspersed with languid stretches of navel gazing (read: moping).Īlexander (Paul Dano), the irascible goat, and Douglas (Chris Cooper) the laconic bird provide us with moments of well-timed wit. There’s only a hint that Carol is too distraught over some unresolved relationship issues to head the pack. Why are these walking shag carpets without an alpha? Despite their self-awareness, cognitive skills, and language, these seem to be the only animals in the world incapable of identifying at least one leader among them. Awestruck and in desperate need of guidance, the beasts crown him king. In his woolly wolf costume, he fabricates a story of Viking origins and magical powers. When Max is cornered by them, he belts out, “Be still!” He runs away, takes a boat an island where he finds a group of monsters upset at the ruckus the irritable, depressed Carol (James Gandolfini) has made.
Sendak’s book, the story begins as the belligerent Max lashes out at his mother. Is Carol talking to Max, or to the director who destroyed this film?įamiliar to at least a couple generations who read Mr. There’s a spark to your work that can’t be taught,” observes Carol (James Gandolfini), the insouciant, horned beast who befriends Max (Max Records), the protagonist of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic upon which this film is based.
#WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE MOVIE SERIES#
Maurice Sendak gladly sold out to these vessels of mediocrity, standing idly by in approval while Spike Jonze-the poster-child filmmaker of of this image-conscious “sub”-culture (if it can be said to be a culture at all)-slapped together a series of incomprehensible, unrelated dialogues in a depressing world with narcissistic, crass monsters who happen to look just like the ones in Mr. Picturesīereft of creativity, it would seem the hipsters have returned to rape the childhood of every generation before them.
Pictures', Legendary Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' adventure film WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, a Warner Bros. as The Bull, CHRIS COOPER as Douglas, PAUL DANO as Alexander, CATHERINE O'HARA as Judith, LAUREN AMBROSE as KW, MAX RECORDS as Max, FOREST WHITAKER as Ira and JAMES GANDOLFINI as Carol in Warner Bros.
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