WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE — ★★★ — Max Records, Catherine Keener, and featuring the voices of James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose and others; rated PG (violence, mild vulgarity, mild profanity, slurs); in general release
Make no mistake, the big-screen adaptation/expansion of "Where the Wild Things Are" is visually beautiful. But it might be too intense and too emotionally upsetting for real-life wild things (also known as children).
In fact, a strong case could be made that it's not really a kids film at all. Or at least not a film that was made for little kids.
However, it is a rewarding experience for much-bigger and older wild things, namely the parents and others who grew up reading and loving the Caldecott Medal-winning, 1963 story book by Maurice Sendak. It's a faithful but occasionally downbeat fantasy-drama. And it really looks great.
(Again, it should be mentioned that there's some scary content and imagery. While the movie is rated PG, it occasionally veers toward PG-13 territory.)
Newcomer Max Records stars as Max, a mischievous but imaginative boy who's feeling upset after being bullied by his older sister's friends. And when Max's mother (Catherine Keener) starts spending more time with her boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) than with him, Max acts up.
He bites his mother and, still wearing his homemade wolf costume, he flees into a fantasy land that's inhabited by the title creatures.
He's immediately befriended by Carol (the voice of James Gandolfini), a hulking beast who has been ostracized by his fellow Wild Things because of his quick temper and destructive tendencies.
Max is able to smooth things over and eventually becomes "king" of this land and these creatures, though his return to real life is bound to be as painful as it is inevitable.
The expressive, lovable Wild Things characters shown here are a creation of the wizards at Jim Henson's Creature Shop. (Full "puppet" suits were created for performers, and then facial features and expressions were computer generated. Voice actors then gave them full "life.")
And as to the question of whether the relatively slight source material can be stretched to feature length, director Spike Jonze and co-screenwriter Dave Eggers kept much of writer/artist Sendak's words and imagery intact, and their augmentations to it make sense.
Also, a good two-thirds of the movie is spent in the Wild Things "village," forests and other surroundings.
Still, as dazzling as those sequences are, it's up to fresh-faced Records to carry the heaviest work load, dramatically. He's terrific, though, and definitely bears watching.
Besides, he is surrounded by dependable veterans such as Keener and Ruffalo, as well as Wild Things voices Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Catherine O'Hara, Forest Whitaker and others.
"Where the Wild Things Are" is rated PG and features occasionally disturbing violent content and imagery (creatures attacks, roughhousing, snowball and dirt-clod fights, and child-in-peril moments), some mildly vulgar humor and references (digestion and bodily fluids), scattered mild profanity, and derogatory language and slurs. Running time: 104 minutes.
e-mail: jeff@desnews.com