Where the Wild Things Are : DVD Review






Title: Where the Wild Things Are
Director: Spike Jonze
Starring: Max Records, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper, James Gandolfini, Forest Whitaker
Running time: 91 minutes
Certificate: PG
Format: DVD, Blu-ray/DVD combi pack (with digital copy)
Released: 10/05/10

The popular 1963 book Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak took a while to get made into a film, but finally made it onto the big screen in 2009. It’s now available on blu-ray and is equally as mesmerising on the small screen. Let the wild rumpus begin!

The current trend is for books to be made into films via animation or CGI and indeed it would have been simple to make use of these technologies for Where The Wild Things Are, however director Spike Jonze opts for large puppets and real actors. An inspired choice – as this in itself gives the film an otherworldly effect somehow, and makes the wild things seem much more real.

The concept for the film is handled extremely well – as a 48 page book there isn’t much material to go on for a film with a one hour and thirty one minute running time. However what there is within the book is a place of wonderful imagination and vibrantly interesting characters, with regards both their strange outward appearances and their inner, unique characters which plays a large part in how they cope with their lives and the appearance of Max.

It’s easy to see how some adults may have some concerns over the PG rating of this film. As well as a young boy running away from home, it also deals with many adult themes such as violence, mental depression, wanton destruction of property and regicide! But within the heart of both the book and the film is the idea that we are all wild things and that sometimes life does make you angry and it is how that anger is dealt with which is the most important moral of the tale. Jonze himself was quite vocal about the subject and was adamant that the film representation was true to the principle idea of the book. Moreover he, quite plainly stated that if audiences did not like what they saw they were welcome not to watch. There are none of the sugar-coated hidden messages that have ruined other film versions of much-loved child fiction such as ‘His Dark Materials’.

Where The Wild Things Are is a wild rumpus of fun!

Author : Kevin Stanley