Where are the Wild Things?

So everyone has a favorite childhood book, or two! Mine were Is Your Momma a Llama and Where the Wild Things Are. So naturally I just had to go see the movie when it came out this past Friday! I thought it was a pretty good movie considering it was based on a ten page book that didn’t really have a plot to it. The monsters obviously didn’t look real but I feel like they weren’t supposed to. The beginning of the movie really does a good job setting up the reason Max runs away, with no one really listening to him and his sister being rude and not standing up for him. I found it comical the way the he plays in his own little world only because most small children do that in order to entertain himself. He makes a number of forts to play in and makes up his own situations to act out with his stuffed animals and toys. When he does run away, the placement of the boat seems almost too perfect, but then again it is a movie. When he does arrive at the island where the wild things are, the scene is intense. One of the monsters is pissed and destroying everything but none of the others can do anything about it. He tells them to be still and that he is there to be their king and get everything back in order. In a way he is a parent figure and soon learns the responsibilities the position entails. When the monsters are tricked into believing he has special powers and can take of them, they all begin having fun and enjoying each other for a short while, until they realize their problems still exist. The goat in the movie seems to symbolize Max, just in the wild thing world, No one every listens to him and his “friends” are always rude and disrespectful and hurting him. Max recognizes this at towards the end of the movie and apologizes, because he wasn’t very nice either. Carol, one of the more important monsters that takes care of Max first, is the one that needs the most help. He is very dramatic and feels the whole world is against him and his pessimistic ways seems to bring everyone else down. KW is the girl Carol, he is a boy by the way, really likes and she feels the same but he frustrates her so much that she would rather not be around him. She has these two friends that are owls, which she gets her advice from. The way she gathers them to talk to them is hilarious. She just hits them in the head with rocks until they fall out of the sky, then goes and scoops them up. And they don’t actually talk, they just squeak and hoot but the monsters say they are able to understand them. Max asks them what he should do, but they aren’t much help. It does however show he cares about them and that he wants to help them but he doesn’t know how. Max begins to realize how he was acting out with his mother earlier in the story, by the way Carol begins to act and be disrespectful. Max lets him know when he is getting out of control, just as his mother did to him. Once Max goes and talks to the rest of the monsters and lets them know that he isn’t going to be able to help them and that he needs to leave is when the movie begins to get very sad. As Max is leaving in his boat to go back home, Carol comes running to say goodbye, but he is too late, Max is already in the ocean. So instead the monsters begin to howl to send him off, and Max howls back, knowing that they were all able to teach each other about their own lives. When Max returns home, he is greeted by his worried mother and the audience is able to tell that he has learned to be more respectful and to listen to he, because of what he was able to learn on the island.

I thought this was a very good movie, with a deeper meaning that was woven well into the story line. Max is able to learn a lesson on how he should behave, and I feel that the movie is able to portray that to children if they watch it and pay attention, but then again you never know. Yes, the movie is sad and unrealistic with the monsters, but it is imaginative and fun at the same time. The characters personalities are funny at times then can switch over into serious and judgmental just as humans can. They understand they have to be there to help each other, and that they have problems that need to be worked, but they don’t understand how to help themselves until they understand they have to pull together and put aside their differences. I don’t really remember much about the nook, but I do know that some of the details of the movie were very different from the book. The part in the book where Max is sent to his room, and that is where he has the dream, is a totally different scenario in the movie. Instead of going to his room, he runs away and falls down into the forest and that is when he begins his journey to where the wild things are. I reckon they did have to change the storyline just a bit to allow the movie to flow a bit more. And the alterations aren’t a big enough deal to interrupt the storyline in the book so it all worked out. You may here people say it isn’t a good movie and that it is too sad, but I feel that it was resolved well and that the lessons it portrays is done very smoothly and that Max learns the error of his ways by having to deal with other people acting that way toward him. So go see it and judge for yourself!