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Where the Wild Things are: Movie Review and Song
October 20, 2009
Where the Wild Things Are Movie Review (and song)
[youtube jXr9r8RyT9o nolink]
I was excited about the new movie Where the Wild Things Are. I also saw that on Rotten Tomatoes, Where the Wild Things Are got mostly positive reviews. It had good word of mouth, good reviews, lots of momentum, and I decided to go last night, when I was feeling particularly wistful and melancholy. I was ready to love it and felt sure I would.
I liked how it started. The rest of the audience did too. No lengthy intro titles, just jumping right in. The home life of Max was portrayed in a way that immediately lets us connect with what it was like to be nine. Of course he gets in trouble, is upset, and in this movie version, he runs away to nearby shore and gets in a sailboat and sails away. The ultimate run away from home fantasy.
I would love to tell you how much I enjoyed the rest of the movie, when he landed on the Island of the Wild Things. But I can’t. I understand the challenge of turning a book of very few words (9 sentences or so?) into a full length feature. There were probably hundreds of approaches considered, and I have a great deal of respect for Spike Jones and David Eggers. But I found the monsters they created to be distractingly strange and irritatingly moody. I understand the idea was that these wild things WERE Max’s emotions. But for me it just didn’t work. I’m really suprised, because I fully expected to love it, to be moved by it, to be touched by it. I’m not a touch cookie when it comes to touching, heart-warming, even challengingly emotional films. But this time- sorry Spike and David- I know you both worked so hard on it- (and I know this review will really hurt their feelings for weeks ;) ) but the movie just didn’t do it for me. And I got the feeling, most of the audience leaving was having the same thought I was- “That was really really, um, different. I guess it was you know, pretty good”. We all really wanted to like it. I was expecting to be one of the ones who actually did.
I expect to see pretty quick decrease in ticket sales of “Where the Wild Things Are” in the next 2 weeks. Next weekend will do pretty well because of the people waiting for the lines to thin out. I predict after that, it will take a pretty steep dive.
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