The rest is a complete celebration of the innocence and the abandonment of childhood. The pain felt in growing up echoes through each character and every moment of beauty is rewarded by several more of anguish. It is a story you have probably already seen in your lifetime and if you're at all like me, it may resonate quite profoundly.
At the beginning, Max gets involved in a snowball fight with his sisters' friends. It gets out of hand and they crush him beneath an igloo he has made and he starts to cry. It is at this point we can see Max has reached an awkward age, too old to get away with behaving the way he does, too young to really understand what to do next. So when his mother sends him to bed with no supper, he instead jumps on an imaginary ship to become the king of the Wild Things.
From the moment we meet the Wild Things they are the perfect mix of cute, funny, curious and downright terrifying. They all debate about whether to eat Max up, as seems to be the done thing, until he tells them he was a king for twenty years in his old world.
Each of the Wild Things is a little bit like Max, none more so than Carol, who shares his extreme mood-swings, but more importantly his enthusiasm, creativity and warmth. When they all come together they have moments of pure childlike fun, building forts and indulging in dirt clod wars, but sometimes Max goes off with each of the individual Wild Things and listens to their problems. Max kindly suggests to Douglas that "no-one ever really listens to him." It's as if Max is addressing these issues within himself.
And this may sound like quite a lot of drama and action of sorts is involved but in actual fact Where The Wild Things Are is very much a mood-piece. Though the emotional range shown by Max and the creatures varies wildly, this is mostly because they are portrayed as young children and the events that take place may seem fairly trivial. This is because the action is all taking place within Max, the sadness and disappointment in watching someone grow up against their will is all too real. While many children will be bewildered by the actions of the Wild Things, that is because they have yet to experience the loss most adults have in moving out of that part of life.
Spike Jonze has used a range of colours that allow the characters to be as vibrant as they wish. This is not a film that sacrifices personality and charm in favour of special effects and spectacular visuals. What it does is capture emotional performances using CGI of such high quality that you wouldn't even know it was there, alongside terrific voice-acting from some dependable actors and a tremendous performance from Max Records as Max, giving us the maturity of someone who can understand what it's like to have to grow up before being ready for it.
You probably won't notice that you've been affected by this film until the last 15 minutes or so. Where The Wild Things Are sort of creeps up on you. When you begin to realise what all of the film has meant and how Max has chosen to approach the real world, it's everything you'd expect it to be.
The important thing here is that Max strikes an absolutely perfect balance between being a bit of a shit and being lovable. As he stands on the table and yells "Feed me woman!" You can't help but laugh. When he lies to the Wild Things we can forgive him in the same way that they do. And every step of the way you'll believe that he is having the time of his life on that island, playing with his imaginary creatures, which is quite an achievement.
And the soundtrack is absolutely marvellous by the way.
9/10
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