I grew up on Where the Wild Things Are. We still have at least one copy floating around. I will forever remember it as one of my most-beloved childhood books, along with The Lupin Lady, The Children's Encyclopedia of Insects, and Good Dog Carl. (I have an autographed copy of Good Dog Carl. My mom gave it to me when I was 17 and in Spain on a year-long student exchange.) Where the Wild Things Are is probably the one book that has held up best.

With that in mind, my review, thoughts and reactions to the movie:

Where the Wild Things Are, as a book, is about being a child. A pretty normal child, at that, because I'm pretty sure almost everyone went through the out-of-control phase. And there are dark elements in the book, too, even if they're stronger in the movie: "I'll eat you up, I love you so." Love is scary. Love gets you eaten up. Hating someone--like your mom, when she sends you to bed without any supper--is the flip side of loving someone.

In the movie, to me, the focus is more on the parts of yourself that scare you. Because the monsters really are scary--even when things are fun (and one of the elements of the movie that I liked best is how excellently they blur the line between having-fun roughhousing and what happens when things go too far, when people actually start being hurt) there's that element of danger. You can see it sometimes, in Max: he's afraid, at least a little, because the Wild Things are so much bigger and stronger and more dangerous than he is. Even when he's their king, even when they're happy he's there, they could kill him accidentally. In most of the scenes, even the happy ones, there's a moment where he hesitates.

Essentially, though, this is a children's movie (although I'm not sure it's appropriate for most children--it's like a movie that doesn't really have a targeted age range) about fear and anger. Which is interesting, especially since there aren't any answers and the movie doesn't have something that I'd call a happy ending; more like bittersweet.

I think that fear and anger are important parts of childhood, though, ones that get brushed over. To quote my my favorite review of the ones I read, "Movies that promise to make you feel like a kid again tend to overlook how miserable childhood can be. ...This isn't a zany, faux-heartwarming slapstick comedy with adorable creatures and a plucky youngster at the centre."

That's why the scariest monster, Carol, who's also the second main character (after Max, of course) is the most frightening of the monsters. He's the one who's closest to Max: he doesn't know how to reach out to the others, especially the ones he wants to like. He's out of control--he destroys things without thinking about the consequences, while the others watch. He destroys things he's built, things that are very important to him, because he's angry. There are definite parallels between his actions and Max's--breaking things that you can't fix and then regretting it. He's the one who's going to eat Max even after they become best friends, and that scares even him. Carol is the part of Max that feels most strongly, that reacts most violently and mostly lovingly.

And that's where the journey-of-self-discovery comes into play, of course, because Max recognizes himself and etc. But it's far more subtly done than in most films, and it's not solving all the problems in the movie. There are no quick fixes in this world--you can't be the king of the Wild Things, you can't solve everything, you can't be never unhappy. Max goes home--and his supper is still hot (well, reheated)--but he's still going to be angry. He's still going to blow up, he's still going to be lonely, he's still going to be a too-sensitive child growing through difficult times.

I find it interesting how a lot of reviews mention that it's, and I quote a specific line but it's definitely a trend even in the positive reviews, not particularly deep or daring stuff." Because, really, I disagree. Simple doesn't mean it's not important--I think it usually makes things more important. And there is a definite lack in childhood movies that don't sugar-coat things. What Maurice Sendak's book wasn't, and what the movie wasn't, was a happy story where the Wild Things are fun and harmless--toothless. They're scary, especially in the movie. It's all about not being able to have everything you want. It's about being unhappy, and being lonely. That can be profound, especially when it's for people who haven't hit puberty yet, a supposedly young and innocent age. That's bullshit. I was systematically and aggressively bullied--to the point of requiring therapy--by my classmates in the second grade, and it was, unquestionably, the worst time of my entire life, even if you count my years as a depressed middle schooler, and the winter of my student exchange, when I was away from my family for Christmas for the first time, still unable to speak decent Spanish, being bullied in school, depressed and seriously sick.

The Max in the movie is not as well-adjusted as the Max in the book. In the book, Max is just hyperactive, out of control in the way that children that age can be; I was one of them, and out of control in similar ways. In the movie, he's hurting more. It's not, thankfully, another one of those stories where he's escaping the trauma of his Horrible, Abusive Family. His sister loves him, even though she's growing up. His mom loves him. He's over-reacting when he runs away, when he lashes out--that's a lot of the point. It's not justified. It's made understandable, it's not excused. It is, in fact, made explicit that he needs to grow up. Although it's a little cliche to put in the divorced parents/single mother/absent father/new-significant-other situation, they at least don't go overboard, amen thank-you and hallelujah, and it's something I can definitely understand.

Most of the critics I've read* seem to have issue with the middle section of the movie, because it's so helter-skelter and unfocused; they disagree with the arrangement of the action. I think that's one of the strengths of the movie: clearly, these people don't remember preteen sleepovers, where everything's wonderful at night, there's cake and dancing and movies and giggling and gossip--for me, at least; or video games and pizza and laughing and music, if you're my brother. But the next morning, everyone's tired. Someone gets upset. Things have dragged on too long. Nobody's really sure what to do, anymore, everything fun got done the night before. Maybe a squabble or two starts out. Things disintegrate. That's the exact path followed on the island, only more so--that sort of energy and excitement can't be maintained, and it turns out that not every day can be like that, filled with fun and excitement, with no conflict.

I am not particularly clear on what the point of the owl scenes were.

On a final note, there is a very disturbing paper or three on the implications of the KW-swallowing-Max scene.

*My normal approach to deciding opinions on movies is to see something, mull it over, maybe talk about it with others I've seen it with, think more, then read what others have had to say. In this case, critics and professional reviews because that's what's available. Then, I see how I react to what they have to say, which helps me to more accurately identify what my own opinions are, and why.