Where the Wild Things Are

Rumpus room: ‘Wild Things’ is an adventurous voyage to the end of childhood

October 16, 2009|Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Let’s dispense with the preliminaries: What do the experts think of “Where the Wild Things Are’’? As the end credits rolled, my 12-year-old daughter and her bestest friend turned to me with faces like the twin masks of comedy and tragedy on a Broadway playbill. One girl’s eyes were wet with tears of sadness and profound joy; “I loved it,’’ she sighed. The other looked as if someone had stuck an egg-beater in her ear and scrambled her brains. “That is not a children’s movie,’’ she growled.

They’re both right. In adapting Maurice Sendak’s slender 1963 picture-book classic, director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers have teased out the melancholy along with the magic. While this much-awaited, long-in-the-works film has more than its share of wild rumpuses, its big, shaggy heart is in what happens after the rumpus dies down: insecurities, misunderstandings, fears. “Where the Wild Things Are’’ isn’t for little kids so much as it’s about them, and parents and tykes expecting the next “Shrek’’ or even a seamless work of Pixar genius will be sorely disappointed if not a little freaked out. The movie is a wild thing, and that’s not such a bad thing at all.

In young Max Records - 9 when the film was shot three years ago - “Wild Things’’ has a Max who’s much older than in the book but who still has the proper mix of angel face and Tasmanian devil (besides, he looks great in wolf jammies). We’re introduced to him as he and the camera both appear to be tumbling downstairs at top speed; the title is scratched on the emulsion in an ADD blurt. So far, so good.

Eggers, a novelist and occasional voice of his generation, has reset Sendak’s tale in recognizable reality, but he thankfully doesn’t dwell on it. What we learn of Max’s life is overheard in snatches, the way a child listens: Dad is out of the picture, mom (Catherine Keener) is stressed from work, older sis (Pepita Emmerichs) has jerky friends, Max is alone. A brief shot of mom smooching her new boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) is all the boy and the movie need to flip out.

He dashes into the woods and “Wild Things’’ gracefully transitions from our world into Theirs. Max journeys by boat as in the book (no sea monsters, sadly) and there’s a frightening, tumultuous nighttime beach landing. The film at this point feels genuinely dangerous, wired to explode. The score by Karen O of the rock group Yeah Yeah Yeahs is acoustic but off-kilter: It sounds like the “Juno’’ soundtrack with teeth. Then we meet the first Wild Thing. His name is Carol, he’s having a tantrum, and he talks in the voice of Tony Soprano. Perfect.