WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Some of His Best Friends Are Beasts
By MANOHLA DARGIS
New York Times, October 16, 2009

Most of the snuffling, growling beasts that roam and often stomp through “Where the Wild Things Are,” Spike Jonze’s alternately perfect and imperfect if always beautiful adaptation of the Maurice Sendak children’s book, come covered in fur. Some have horns; most have twitchy tails and vicious-looking teeth.

The beasts snarl and howl and sometimes sniffle. One has a runny nose. Yet another has pale, smooth skin and the kind of large, wondering eyes that usually grow smaller and less curious with age. This beast is Max, the boy in the wolf costume who one night slips into the kind of dream the movies were made for.

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Max, played by the newcomer Max Records, is the pivotal character in this intensely original and haunting movie, though by far the most important figure here proves to be Mr. Jonze.

After years in the news, the project and its improbability — a live-action movie based on a slender, illustrated children’s book that runs fewer than 40 pages, some without any words at all — are no longer a surprise. Even so, it startles and charms and delights largely because Mr. Jonze’s filmmaking exceeds anything he’s done in either of his inventive previous features, “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Adaptation” (2002). With “Where the Wild Things Are” he has made a work of art that stands up to its source and, in some instances, surpasses it.

First published in 1963, the book follows the adventures of Max, who looks to be about 6 (he’s closer to 9 in the movie) and enters making mischief “of one kind and another” while dressed in a wolf suit with a long, bushy tail and a hood with ears and whiskers. After his unseen mother calls him “wild thing!” and he threatens to eat her up, he is sent to his room without dinner. But his room magically transforms into a forest and, finding a boat, he sails to a place populated by giant, hairy, scary beasts that make him their king. Eventually the tug of home pulls him back to his room, where supper (“still hot”) sits waiting.

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