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"Where the Wild Things Are," director Spike Jonze's big-screen reimagining of Maurice Sendak's classic children's tale, doesn't fit neatly into a genre.
It's certainly not a coming-of-age story, because the young protagonist, Max, grows in neither years nor stature, and only marginally increases his understanding of the world around him during his adventures with the lumbering, gnarly beasties who populate his brain.
If anything, "Wild Things" is a "becoming an age" story. Jonze, with the help of hep new auteur Dave Eggers, slips inside the nappy old wolf suit of a willful 9-year-old boy — played here with superb sensitivity and genuine child ardor by Max Records — and preserves that moment in a boy's life when, armed only with budding aggression and an indomitably playful spirit, he launches an attack on the expectations of a fast-approaching adolescence.
There's nothing in this film that a scabby-kneed third-grader won't understand on a guttural level, yet the filmmakers set the prevailing vibe at an adult frequency. Eggers, in describing the writing process for "Wild Things," has repeatedly referred to his job as "refanging" the book, and there's plenty of bite in the story.
Max lives in a broken home. He shares a strong love connection with his hardworking mother (a serious, stellar Catherine Keener) but wants for male guidance and companionship. Dad lives elsewhere, and mom's boyfriend (Mark Ruffalo) is not a welcome addition. When Max's frustrations inevitably boil over, he bolts out of his house, into the streets, through a hole in a backyard fence, into some scrubby woods and, magically, into the land of the Wild Things.
The unruly cast of Jim Henson Creature Shop characters he meets there, named with the comic efficiency of a child, includes Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), Alexander (Paul Dano), Judith (Catherine O'Hara), Ira (Forest Whitaker), the Bull (Michael Berry Jr.), Douglas (Chris Cooper) and KW (Lauren Ambrose).
During Max's famously wild rumpus with this hairy band of overgrown monster children, he gradually recognizes in his companions the emotions and behaviors that complicate his own life. Carol, the self-appointed leader of the bunch, closely mimics Max in his desire to create a world where "only the things we want to happen, happen." (The sensitive, brash Carol represents a well-executed break from type for Gandolfini, though it's hard to think of the voice of a gargantuan Muppet as a breakout role.)
Carol dubs Max king of the Wild Things, and in short order the crown weighs heavily upon his brow. Charged with maintaining the happiness of his new companions, Max, who in life wants no less than to feel loved and content, learns how difficult it can be to execute that mandate in a family, even an imaginary one.
Max carries that lesson with him as he makes the journey across worlds, back through the hole in the fence, up his street, through the front door and into the kitchen, where a worried mother has been keeping his dinner warm.
In the spectrum of Spike Jonze films ("Being John Malkovich," "Adaptation"), "Where the Wild Things Are," which opened for press types Tuesday at the Ritz East in Philadelphia and hit theaters nationwide Friday, falls on the more approachable end, but like the others, it bears the director's unmistakable mark: a sense of uncertainty about life and where it could take us.
That's a lot to read into a children's book, but Sendak handpicked Jonze to do it, and the author appears to be pleased with his choice. In a Warner Bros. interview he said: "What flows through the whole thing is such a strange feeling. I've never seen a movie that looked or felt like this. ... The film has an entire emotional, spiritual, visual life which is as valid as the book."
Agreed.
Michael Long welcomes e-mail at mlong@lnpnews.com.
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