Where the Wild Things Are : Movie Review


Directed by Spike Jonze from a 400-word children's picture book first published in 1963, Where the Wild Things Are may be the toughest adaptation since Tim Burton fashioned Mars Attacks! from a series of bubble-gum cards. Tougher, actually: Burton was working with ephemeral, anonymous trash; Jonze is elaborating on a classic by distinguished author-illustrator Maurice Sendak.

As its title suggests, Where the Wild Things Are is a book about the Freudian id—and it's also a media saga, having served as the basis for an animated short, an opera, a ballet, and a museum exhibit, as well as a prop for child psychologists and some relatively discreet merchandizing. Thus tucked into a collective, multigenerational unconscious, the slender text exudes authority. Jonze has struggled to bring the book—which was to have been his first feature—to the screen for even longer than the eight years it took Sendak to finish it.

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Author : J. Hoberman