Where the Wild Things Are
Director: Spike Jonze
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 1.5
A troubled little boy - unhappy with his single mother and friends - delves into his own psyche to play War with oversized, despondent Muppets who take him to be their king before ultimately rejecting his empty promises. Depressive and flat, it loses the beautifully-drawn joie-de-vivre of the (very simplistic) Maurice Sendak classic, with only a few shots of the shoreline (by Lance Acord) and some impressive CGI making any impression. Bruno Bettelheim wrote, "The monster a child knows best and is most concerned with [is] the monster he feels or fears himself to be," which sounds plausible, but the inner monsters here aren't going to be placated so easily by chocolate cake and an impossibly tolerant Mom.
