[UPDATE: Topping off this post with the newly minted review from EW‘s Lisa Schwarzbaum]:
Profoundly beautiful and affecting, Where the Wild Things Are is a breath-‚Ä®taking act of artistic transubstantiation. From Maurice Sendak’s beloved picture book about a rambunctious little boy named Max and the kingdom of untamed creatures who adopt him as their like-minded king, filmmaker Spike Jonze has made a movie that is true to Sendak’s unique sensibilities and simultaneously true to Jonze’s own colorful instincts for anarchy. This is, to quote the 1963 children’s classic, ”the most wild thing of all.” It’s also personal movie-‚Ä®making, with corporate backing, at its best. Whatever the (well-documented) struggles it took to create this gem, the result is worth every monster growl…
…Sendak’s great gift to readers, old as well as young, is the seriousness with which he presents even the wildest mayhem, the deepest contradictions in human (and Wild Thing) behavior; the author empathizes with fantasists but has no time for cuteness. In his transcendent movie adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze not only respects the original text but also honors movie lovers with the same clarity of vision. This is one of the year’s best. To paraphrase the Wild Thing named KW, I could eat it up, I love it so.
Marshall Fine, Hollywood & Fine:
‚ÄúWhere the Wild Things Are‚Äù is a startling achievement from a director with a clear vision and the strength to see it through. Working from ‚Äì but not slavishly adapting ‚Äì Maurice Sendak‚Äôs beloved children‚Äôs classic, Jonze has made a movie that can‚Äôt help but create controversy because of its utter simplicity, which masks layers of complexity…
Jonze has made a career out of subverting genres and expectations, whether in ‚ÄúBeing John Malkovich‚Äù or ‚ÄúAdaptation.‚Äù In this case, Jonze and Eggers have written a film that truly captures what it‚Äôs like to be a 10-year-old, in all its mood-swinging glory. This film is fueled by imagination, not driven by plot or built around structure. It‚Äôs a film about play and the sudden shifts it can take when someone gets upset or hurt or hatches an unexpected idea…
But “Where the Wild Things Are” is a movie about imagination with a small “i” and fantasy with a small “f.” Capital letters need not apply. Deeper meaning must be gleaned; it never announces itself.
Devin Faraci, CHUD:
Where the Wild Things Are is a masterpiece. An arthouse masterpiece about the sorrows of growing up. A sensitive, beautiful masterpiece about the pain of being a bright, creative, lonely, troubled child. A brilliant masterpiece about the search for love, acceptance, stability and comfort…
Scary as the prospect of being smashed under a dogpile of monsters or being eaten by an angry Carol is, scarier is the prospect of not fitting in. Of not being understood. Of being alone. Of seeing your family group fall apart. Of having change come in and take away everything you know. Of loving so much… and not quite being loved the same way in return. These are the pains that Jonze really embraces, and these are the pains the inform every moment of the film… Jonze doesn’t comment on this, he doesn’t go out of his way to draw parallels. And he doesn’t have Max learn a lesson in a big eureka moment of enlightenment. Max just sort of slowly grows up and comes to understand what it is that he’s done. And to understand the pain he feels and the fears he has.
That’s the really beautiful part of the film. As gorgeous as Lance Acord’s cinematography is and as moving as the soundtrack, by Carter Burwell and Karen O, is, the most beautiful aspect of Where the Wild Things Are is seeing Max slowly come to learn things that he never articulates but that we understand. It’s a movie that’s fundamentally sad at its core, but also uplifting and wonderful in its belief that love and forgiveness are more powerful than anger or recrimination. Jonze never hammers these points home but lets the movie slowly, quietly bring us to these points of understanding.
Throwing a wet blanket on the wild rumpus, The New Yorker‘s David Denby:
Jonze and Eggers have spoken of their desire to keep the film close to a child’s needs, but have they done that? Kids like danger, followed by a release from danger and a return to safety, yet the only danger posed by these creatures is that they will turn Max into someone as messed-up as they are. The filmmakers may have wanted to link Max’s anger to the creatures’ wounds, but the connection is fuzzy—Max isn’t the one who hurt them. I have a vision of eight-year-olds leaving the movie in bewilderment. Why are the creatures so unhappy?
You know what? I don’t know any eight-year-olds, and even if I did — and if indeed they’re bewildered, which I doubt — their bewilderment is not my problem.
Sasha adds: I know eight year-olds, lots of them and they are a pretty dark bunch to begin with. They stay cheery for our sake. The attempt to make childhood into something it is not seems to be uniquely American. There are things we should protect our kids from – torture porn, high fructose corn syrup — but a tough dramatic narrative is not one of them.
