Where The Wild Things Are
Wow. I really didn't like this.
First the good stuff. I've really fallen in love with artfully-handheld camerawork the last year or two. I mean, Lance Acord's work here isn't on the level of Malick/Lubezki or Dante Spinotti or the like, but it's a very pretty movie. And the Wild Things themselves are wonderful creations.
And that's it for the good stuff. At first, my problems were pretty contained with the first 10 minutes in the "real world." I think, if you're making a 2 hour Wild Things movie, you can really afford to spend more than 10 minutes setting up everything like this. It's like Jonze really couldn't be bothered with the mundane normal stuff and just did his damnedest to condense Max's life into a super-quick prologue to the fun stuff. And technically he succeeded, but I think the beginning suffers from an unnecessary reliance on worn storytelling cliches and a distinct lack of believability in the early characterizations. I was disappointed. But then Max ran away and went to the island and things were pretty and cool-looking and goofy and all was going to be well for the remainder of the film.
Except that only lasted about 15 minutes, then I began to feel fatigued again. Honestly, it's all really well-crafted, but there's almost zero depth to this thing, which is sort of predictable given the adaptation. However, I think it all could have worked if a filmmaker had gone to the whole further extreme with this material and made a total pure-cinema visual excursion... but of course that wouldn't lend itself to such a marketable hipster pop culture commodity like this is. I simply defy anyone to make the argument this film should have been anything longer than 30 or 40 minutes. It might have been fantastic at that length, as none of the narrative weaknesses would have been so magnified and might have maintained the simple charm of the original book.
I will say, I liked the couple moments early on in the Wild Thing Kingdom or wherever, that rather deftly hinted at the hidden dangers under the surface of the story. I might have liked a bit more of that as well. Oh, and also, might have liked a bit less Karen O. Like, a ratio closer to "none whatsoever." Please.
