{"id":2454,"date":"2009-10-18T16:58:59","date_gmt":"2009-10-18T16:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2454"},"modified":"2009-10-18T16:58:59","modified_gmt":"2009-10-18T16:58:59","slug":"critic_at_large_55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2454","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Where The Wild Things Are"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maurice Sendak&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/title\/tt0386117\/\"><i>Where the Wild Things Are<\/i><\/a>, 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&#8217;s book, I&#8217;m not sure this is the kind of film that kids will play over and over on the DVD player in the den. Max&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>The film&#8217;s artistry is undeniable, but it didn&#8217;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&#8217;s missing the point. The story isn&#8217;t about a series of events. It&#8217;s about one lonely and imaginative boy&#8217;s state of mind. <\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?w=695\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maurice Sendak&#8217;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&#8217;s book, I&#8217;m not sure this is the <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2454' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-DA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}