Barely having remembered the book from my childhood, the movie version of Where The Wild Things Are wasn’t particularly enticing to me, but I was curious nonetheless. Being criticized more often for being a starry-eyed movie lover than a critic, I wondered how bad it could be. Critics were gushing over it and it has some type of hip soundtrack. Besides, I’d see it at my favorite theater for half price and eat potato skins.
Perhaps the omen of the evening were the potato skins, which looked like normal potato skins but were coated with some sort of invisible burnt sooty fragrance. I bit into the first skin and it was unfit to eat and I returned them from whence they came, only to receive nachos that I didn’t expect would be covered with black olives and onions.
Like those wretched potato skins, Where The Wild Things Are, a perfectly delightful children’s story, has been baked with some sort of crud that ruined my taste for it. Obviously, the book, if filmed shot for shot, would last around 10-15 minutes (the idea of which brings a smile to my face) instead of 90. So what we get included in the film is a lot of childhood angst in the form of the protaganist, Max. People are not paying enough attention to Max. He’s depressed….so he bites his mother and runs away. If you are like me and fearful that his actions will somehow be overlooked or even rewarded, prepare yourself for the ending.
Max has to run away because we have to see the Sigmund and the Sea Monster-type walking stuffed animals. The monsters aren’t scary (except when they’re pulling each other’s arms off their bodies) but roam doing things all monsters do – wallow in depression. Didn’t you know all monsters are sad and lonely? Forget Monsters, Inc. These creatures are just as sad and pitiful as poor old Max, perhaps even moreso. If that brat is a breath of fresh air to them, you know it has be positively dreadful on that island. To make matters worse, that hip soundtrack only heightened the sadness.
To be fair, there were some light moments, but even in those times, I felt myself forcing a courtesy laugh, like I have done as I’m being told a joke I’ve heard a dozen times. Mostly, I kept stopping to ponder if I was actually sitting in the film watching the excruciating, drawn out drama between monster mascots take place, the same questions I’ve had when watching bad reality TV. When the final credits rolled, my filter was off and I said outloud, probably overhead by my neighboring moviegoers, “Oh, thank God!”
At least I got a half-price ticket.
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