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They said it couldn't be done. They said it was practically unfilmable - Maurice Sendak's 200 word flight of fancy ...
They said it couldn't be done. They said it was practically unfilmable - Maurice Sendak's 200 word flight of fancy steadfastly refusing to bend to any director's will. But what do 'they' know anyway? Along comes Indie darling Spike Jonze to get the wild rumpus starting and to scream 'Be Still' at all the naysayers. In fact, having since been truly stunned by his adaptation, it's almost impossible, and indeed a little frightening, to think of any other director than he who brought us "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" taking on Sendak's iconic tale. For all the production woes and hang-ups (it was a supposed five years of work before Jonze's labour of love found its way to our screens), a 'Spiked' "Where The Wild Things Are" seems like the perfect marriage of artist and palette. For the 'big kids' reading this, the story, based as it is on Sendak's bare bones tale of young Max stomping upstairs to his room and fleeing to a land of wonder nestling in his imagination, remains relatively untouched. Here, Max (Max Records), replete with wolf costume, runs away after biting his mom (a brilliant Catherine Keener) for neglecting him. Having squirreled himself away in a local park, Max sets off on his journey to the island of the Wild Things across the sea. The transition between the two worlds, worlds separated by the very thin veil of Max's precocious imaginings, is both seamless and astounding. It's not long after that Max finds himself gate-crashing a domestic disturbance a la the Wild Things. From this moment on, as soon as the Wild Things appoint Max as their new king, the film swings wildly between the awe-inspiring to heart-pounding excitement and back around again to quite frightening moments of stillness. Simply put, it's a film about children...not a film for children. Where The Wild Things Are, thanks to the sheer energy that Jonze imbues in each frame, seems to be a pure distillation of what it means to be a child - the knee-scraping highs to the scary, unknown lows. Max having been marginalised by his family effectively creates his own on an island inside his mind. Each Wild Thing representing a different side of his own personality. There's Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), his boisterous best friend, KW (Lauren Ambrose), the loving loner and Ira (Forest Whittaker), the lazy but creative one to name but three. In a year that has really pushed the boundaries of technical effects, boundaries to be stretched to breaking thanks to "Avatar", it needs to be said that the Jim Hensen-inspired feats of Wild Things are purely wondrous.It may leave the little ones dreaming of Pixar's next offering but "Where The Wild Things Are" could just be the perfect children's tale for the older generations.
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Press Association
Based on Maurice Sendak's beloved children's story, Where The Wild Things Are is not a sentimental coming-of-age story viewed through ...
Based on Maurice Sendak's beloved children's story, Where The Wild Things Are is not a sentimental coming-of-age story viewed through rose-tinted spectacles. Spike Jonze's visually-stunning adaptation unfolds through the eyes of an awkward nine-year-old boy, whose formative years are riddled with loneliness, despair and miscommunication. There is no pretence of happiness by the time we reach the conclusion of this magical odyssey. Life is a struggle and, in the absence of a father figure, the boy will invariably go off the rails many more times. Jonze and co-writer Dave Eggers take Sendak's original story - a mere 10 sentences and 338 words - and expand it into a 101-minute fantasy that attests to the brutality of childhood and the power of the imagination to temporarily keep harsh reality at bay. Pint-sized hero Max (Max Records) doesn't feel like his mother (Catherine Keener) or teenage sister Claire (Pepita Emmerichs) appreciate him. Frustrations come to a boil when the single parent brings home her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo). Max stands on the kitchen table in his favourite white wolf costume and glares at his mother. When she demands he come down, Max makes a scene and growls: "I hate you, I'll eat you up!" In the ensuing struggle, Max bites his mother and runs out the front door into the night. By chance, he finds a sailboat, which transports the lad to the island home of a race of hulking, furry creatures called the Wild Things, whose actions and emotions are completely unpredictable. Horned-nose Judith (voiced by Catherine O'Hara) threatens to eat Max, but he wins over the group's unofficial leader Carol (James Gandolfini) by pretending to be an exiled king. "I have a sadness shield that keeps out all of the sadness and it's big enough for all of us," the boy fibs. The furry friends anoint him leader, and Max decrees they build a fort. The other creatures, including KW (Lauren Ambrose) and goat-like Alexander (Paul Dano), do the lad's bidding but Max quickly learns that harmony isn't always possible. Where The Wild Things Are is heartbreaking, anchored by a mesmerising lead performance from Records, whose face captures every flicker of despair and joy during Max's extraordinary adventure. Meanwhile, Keener and Ruffalo barely have enough screen time to register. The creatures are brilliantly realised using a combination of giant costumes and digital effects, while the vocal performances capture the personalities of these feral beasts, who share many of Max's woes. The Wild Things teach Max the value of friendship and the consequences of bending the truth. "I'm not a Viking, a king or anything - I'm just Max," the boy confesses sadly. "Well, that's not very much is it?" replies Carol. By the end of the film, as we choke back tears, the rotund leader realises how he wrong he was.
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