Let the wild rumpus start?!

I lucked into a chance to see a preview of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are this evening at the marvelous AFI Silver Theater.  The movie, which languished for years, was oft-delayed, and was seemingly at risk of being scrapped and re-shot as late as last year, has finally made it to the screen with the blessing of author Maurice Sendak.

How could you go wrong?  The film had a screenplay penned by Jonze & rock star writer Dave Eggers.  The trailers were breathtaking, featuring a specially recorded version of Arcade Fire’s Wake Up and a selection from the soundtrack penned by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O.  A star-studded cast signed on, with James Gandolfini, Forrest Whitaker, Paul Dano and Chris Cooper voicing the male Wild Things, and Catherine O’Hara and Lauren Ambrose bringing the female Wild Things to life.  Along with a score from frequent Coen Brothers collaborator Carter Burwell, this movie seems like a surefire winner.  And yet somehow I didn’t quite love it.

Despite my less than glowing endorsement, it is a marvelous film.  Fleshing out a 9 sentence picture book into an hour and a half long movie was no simple undertaking, given that the movie had to be short enough to appeal to younger attention spans while keeping the adults entertained.  The film is beautifully shot by Lance Acord, who has been a frequent collaborator of Jonze.  Despite all this, something of the spirit of the book was lost in the translation to film.  While I’m not giving away anything that hasn’t already been reported in Newsweek, stop reading at this point if you don’t want to see any SPOILERS!  Like Sendak, my favorite part of the book was Max imagining his room growing into a great forest while he watched and waited.  I was a bit disappointed that Jonze and Eggers instead had Max flee the house and stumble his way into a mysterious forest alongside an equally unlikely sea.

I felt like the real-world plot lines built up around the story were as flimsy as the world of the Wild Things was real.  The marvelous Catherine Keener is given little with which to work, although she does manage to shine in her limited role. Mark Ruffalo as The Boyfriend and Pepita Emmerichs as Max’s sister Claire seem almost superfluous to the movie, cobbled together to make the “real world” scenes of the film more believable.  Steve Mouzakis does have an amusing turn as possibly the world’s worst elementary school science teacher.

I’ll be interested to see if any of the Wild Things, particularly James Gandolfini, merit Oscar consideration in what has so far been a fairly moribund year for Best Supporting Actor roles.  And where did that specially recorded version of Wake Up go?

If I were a movie critic, I’d give this one a 3.75 out of 5 stars.  It’s definitely worth your time, attention, and money, especially given that an abysmal Michael Bay film leads the yearly box office.  We need more lovingly written, thoughtfully directed, and beautifully scored films that appeal to the better angels of our nature.