Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the book upon which the film is based, never featured prominently in my childhood, so I had only a passing familiarity with the story of Max and his journey to the island of monsters. While the source material is a children’s book, I’m not sure this is the kind of film that kids will play over and over on the DVD player in the den. Max’s imagination is a chaotic, melancholy, reckless place that is ruled by the peculiar logic of children. The monsters are not cuddly and fanciful Pixar creations; they are mangy and vaguely threatening. And Max’s adventures on the island are not carefree and whimsical. Feelings get hurt, often unintentionally. Grand plans go awry. Sadness and loneliness find their way in.
The film’s artistry is undeniable, but it didn’t connect with me. The plot is necessarily flimsy and the characters are necessarily flat, but I found myself getting impatient with the movie. I kept waiting for some sort of narrative to take shape, but I think that’s missing the point. The story isn’t about a series of events. It’s about one lonely and imaginative boy’s state of mind.
