Where the Wild Things Are

[furtech]

Just saw the adaptation of Sendek's book. Longest 30-minute film I've sat through ever.


The Bad:
All my fears of what Jones did to the book were realized and then some. If you go to see this, you can skip the first 25 minutes and the last forty-five. There is some nice monster romping in the middle.

My greatest fear was that they "Yuppy-ized" the book, turning it into a touchy-feely thing instead of the *Rawr* boy and monsters fantasy the book was. Spike Jones (the director--though I think the musician would have done a better job, even being dead and all) totally gentrified the story. They can't decide whether to make Max a kid with tourets symdrome or a sympathetic boy who needs attention. The result is a boy who comes off as a neurotic brat. If they had just made him cartoony-crazy and spent five minutes showing this-- that would have been GREAT. Instead, they tried to make him the monster of the book AND a REAL BOY in the REAL WORLD. Weird.

As soon as the monsters spoke, I knew I was doomed. They sounded -just- like the crowd from Starbucks. Yuppie and soft-spoken-- like that tone of voice couples use in bed in PG films. WTF. I get it, Spike: yeah, the "monsters" are the self-involved adults in the world around Max. When I was a kid monsters had real voices: gravelly or shriek-y or anything monstrous-- not Woody Allen refugees! And the soundtrack! AIIEEE!!! New-age "calming" music! Again, WTF?!! If you heard the soundtrack apart from the film, you'd -never- guess it was from WTWTA! It sounds like day-spa music! Don't even get me started on the dialogue!

As noted above, the last 45 minutes or so were also worth ignoring: the tone turns suicidally depressing and there is -no- resolution or closure with the monsters. Basically Max screws everything up, betrays the trust/faith of the monsters and then just leaves when everything is ruined. That's it. Nice.

The whole end of the movie is a complete downer. You leave the theater thinking, "What's the point?"

The Good:
The costumes were -fantastic- and almost worth the price of admission (assuming it was a matinee). I'll definitely buy the disc with additional features when it comes out. I am desperately curious about the inner structure of the suits: they were able to run and jump and fall without the usual buckling and wobbly-bouncing that over-size pod suits like this suffer from. Also, I think they used CGI animation to manipulate the facial acting (like they did with the animals in "Babe"). Absolutely seamless!



Cut for spoilers and general crankiness wrt the film.

Comments

[missmonstermel.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes yes so hard. You just hit it every point that i hated about the movie. I despised the fact that they used casual toned, super boring and almost aloof adult voices. Starbucks crowd describes it perfectly. I hated KC's art school hipster voice the most...there was just something insincere about it, i don't know. Like she was going to start talking about hitting up American Apparel for some gold lame stretch pants and a kaffiyeh scarf any minute.

These were not monsters id want to hang out with and these were not the monsters that have been part of my life for..well most of my life! Far too adult in the most boring, "take-away-all-feelings- of- wonder" sense of the word.I feel like a lot of it was very self indulgent in a very bad way. Max was a difficult, spirited kid but this Max was so unlovable to me. All of the monsters were unlovable to me...and that's pretty tough to do.

It felt like a film about childhood by people that don't really remember the good parts of being a kid and dwell on bad parts while also throwing in buzz kill after buzz kill. By adults that just don't GET monsters and what they really symbolize to a lot of people. I love you Spike, but dude this was not the movie to explore arty , boring themes and make a terrible soundtrack with Karen O ( who you just happened to be sleeping with at the time...thanks a bunch for giving her the job, ugh) You dropped the ball and i don't care that Sendak is all about this movie.

I understood the themes they were trying to explore but i think it dragged the whole thing down and made it into a steaming pile of unlikeable crap pasted over a dusty, brown, hipster tinged background.

But damn those suits were brilliant, weren't they? I think i heard they did use CG to get those faces to look so good.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I love your comment. If I had a bazillion dollars laying around, I'd hire you to write, design and direct a monster movie for kids (<--because there are plenty of horror films and no monster films outside of the few Toho pics that slither out periodically).

Totally agree with your take. It's clear we're both monster fans, eh?

[missmonstermel.livejournal.com]

And i would totally take you up on that offer, haha! Thank you, what a kind thing to say :)

[oats-a-plenty.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the movie because I'd prolly get pissed by just sitting through it. The costumes are nice, but yeah, the overtones of extreme yupperstertude and a neurotic brat all turn me off the to film.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

You would have been totally pissed...with the exception of about 25 minutes in the middle. Save your money-- though the costumes are worth a Netflix-reservation and the fast-forward button on the DVD player.

[scribble-fox.livejournal.com]

I have to say I completely agree with you. This movie mistook the "Rawr" mentality for utter neurotic angst. The kid wandered from disturbed-but-recognizable child mentality to emotionless plot-device depending on the scene. And the monsters were just painful to listen to. They were dysfunction incarnate. They needed a very skilled psychiatrist not a wild rumpus. Unfortunately they reminded me distressingly of people I've know. Combined they were an unsolvable emotional tangle that became unbearable to sit through. The movie was not "wild" by any stretch of the imagination; it was a dreary melancholic trek.

The good side was the monster suits tho. Indeed it would be interesting to see how how they constructed the understructures. I would guess CG was involved in many of the more acrobatic scenes, but the base costumes had excellent movement to them. I will be interested if the DVD includes a making-of or more of a music-video focus on the director.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I've got my fingers crossed for extensive behind-the-scenes material. Given that it's Henson, there will likely be a bunch of stuff. I might also call a friend who was involved with the puppeteering and might have some insight on the construction of the costumes. From the way they moved in the fight scenes, I suspect that they were -not- hollow pod-type costumes, but nearly solid foam (not one piece, but cut for movement-- like a giant-sized version of those wooden snake toys).

There was a lot of CGI: wow-- the blending was seamless. Much like Del Toro did with Hellboy, they incorporated CG imaging in the middle of running scenes and falling and fighting. The facial acting also had a cg assist with the mouth and eyes-- but again: so well blended (as it -should- be).

[vulpesrex.livejournal.com]

Children's Books - particularly those which are essentially lush, imaginative and evocative collections of illustrations with a story printed over them, with a sentence (or perhaps a paragraph) per page - just do NOT expand in to a 90-minute motion picture, not unless a whole lot of "depth" and "meaning" are added to fill it out. Look what happened with "Polar Express", for example, and there was much more, story and mood and theme-wise, to work with there, than there was in 'Where The Wild Things Are".

Or, even better (or worse, depending on how you look at it), consider "Cloudy, With A Chance of Meatballs".

Hollywood doesn't trust Fantasy; the few times it has tried it, it goes for exaggeration unto the surreal - which becomes unfathomable - or attempts to do it with Camp. Witness two different versions of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", each of which has neat memorable iconic moments, yet are quite divergent in mood. Between the two different interpretations, what with overl;ap, one can almost get a feel for the original storybook.

We are about to be exposed to Tim Burton's take on "Alice in Wonderland". Knowing how Burton tends to go for the macabre and grotesque, and just from seeing the theater lobby posters depicting the Fun-House/Surreal Clown representation of the Mad Hatter, I can't see ANY justifcation for wasting money and time and filmstock to make this...thing, let alone any reason to SEE it, other than that BURTON directed it, so it must be somehow "Cool".

The "Alice" stories are a loosely assembled, barely coherent collection of whimsical circumstance and fancy, and are barely intelligible to smart children, and due to archaic references to victorian commonplaces like sugarloafs and snapdragons and other things which we do not conceive of in this modern world, are dense and dificult for adults to fathom - Caucus Races, Lobster Quadrilles, and mockturtles notwithstanding. No One has any business trying to make a cogent movie out of it, even Disney's animated feature is just a series of amusing sketches which in the end don't leave you enlightened about very much. And I say this as someone who enjoys Lewis Carrol's writings, and classic Disney Feature Animation.

SOOO...WHY does Hollywood continue to do this?

Because the Management types are Bankrupt of feelings, and the Creative types are bankrupt of ideas, or are willing to compromise someone elses' vision, just to Make the Deal.

This is NOT Entertainment.

[cheetah-spotty.livejournal.com]

Luckily, there exists a movie culture outside of hollywood :)

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

There does?

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

Dude! Zombie Bikini Squad... now that is some fine filmmaking!

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I would say that you're -mostly- dead-on correct. If the adaptor (book to script) is good, it can be done. Look at "Stand By Me" (adapted from the very short story by Stephen King) and "Zathura" (based on the book by the same author of "Polar Express" and "Jumangi"). Both expanded the original material into a full-length motion picture-- yet retained the spirit and premise of the original works. In short-- there -are- a few (very few) rare birds that can pull this off, but for the most part the rest is crap.

I don't have negative feelings about Burton's AiW: what you say about the book is absolutely true, but the history of Alice is filled with the many different interpretations that artists have created around the original work. Arthur Rackham to Ralph Steadman: AiW fans eagerly look forward to new interpretations particularly -because- the book is, "barely coherent collection of whimsical circumstance and fancy" (<--I have to say, your description of the book is the shortest, best-worded that I've ever come across)

Re: the "Why" of films like these-- unfortunately it's true at that high level. The skills it takes to become an executive powerful enough to green-light a project are completely different from the skills that make a great creative director. With the usual exceptions (John Lasseter and Walt Disney are the only ones that come to mind).

Fortunately, (as Iisaw points out below), there are many countries and countless independents that still burn creatively.

wow man

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Glad to see you concur.. "As soon as the monsters spoke, I knew I was doomed. They sounded -just- like the crowd from Starbucks."
The voices were my least favorite part of the movie too, but I guess I tried to rationalize the choice so I could squeak thru the rest of the movie.

I also agree on the no resolution... he goes home and just keeps staring at his mom over and over as she adores him... uh.... I guess we're supposed to figure, uh, he's home and he's learned his lesson that he shouldn't run away...? uh, maybe?

Despite the turn-offs, I did enjoy the puppets a lot, and so I added some points back in for that (even though I did wanna see Douglas get his arm back). Still, you make excellent points and thanks for the perspective!

Re: wow man

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I could live with the dopey names, but those voices...particularly the whiny Woody Allen goat. And yeah-- nice "lesson".

Also agree with the Douglas-arm-bit: I'm still not sure what the point of that was. To show that they are just stuffed animals? So kids won't be too scared? If the director thought, "Let's rip his arm off to show that they're just toys!" then clearly the director never had a stuffed toy he loved (just -threaten- to harm a beloved stuffie and a child will have hysterics!)

Re: wow man

[auryanne.livejournal.com]

Lol, I still go into hysterics if someone threatens my stuffies :P

I haven't seen Wild Things yet but I got that hipster vibe off the trailer. I will wait for Netflix I guess.

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

I didn't like the original book in the first place. Didn't like Sendak's art. There was a lot of glowing coverage of the fil before it came out, in the L.A. Weekly. The coverage alone and the writer/Director's typical "Scary and transgressive" take, was just the usual progressive blather. Had no interest.

A few good films these days, but not a lot.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I liked "UP" a lot!, and I saw "Kung Fu Hustle" for the first time this year! There's still hope!

[kyomotion.livejournal.com]

Don't take me wrong but as long as you keep on doing this:

"I'll definitely buy the disc with additional features when it comes out"

They will keep on producing bad movies. If you spend your money on that shite, they get it and keep on doing what they are doing. Congrats.

kyo

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I understand your sentiment, but I think film companies will keep doing bad things regardless of economics. They -might- stop adapting as many books if a few are financially disastrous, but the film executive mindset is that they'll adapt anything that has name-recognition. How a picture gets made is as much industry politics as it is the quality of the project. I can think of a dozen projects that are fantastic, yet can't get funding (for very modest budgets)-- yet Fox has dropped $500 million (yes-- that's $500,000,000!) on James Cameron's Avatar. If it were me, I'd rather produce fifty $10million dollar pictures.

Remember they (theater+movie company) already got $19.25 from me just because I -went- to see the film, and I'll still go to see some films because I don't trust reviewers or I want to see some specific part of the film (special effects or bad werewolf costumes, usually).

The -reason- I want to buy the disc is for the "Making Of" special features that (hopefully) the disc will come with. I'm directly interested in the construction of the costumes. If it doesn't have those features (ie, it is -just- the film) I won't buy it!

this movie makes you feel bad

[nesting.livejournal.com]

i enjoyed the aesthetic of the film, there were some beautiful scenes, and amazin costumes, but the message i got from the movie was "throw a tantrum and be a brat"...

Re: this movie makes you feel bad

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Well, that and, "We're all doomed, so why even bother?" The director throws in that bit about the sun dying for...why??? Maybe he just hates kids.

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

I really pride myself on being a Cynic. I knew the film would be bad when I saw the first trailer... the monster voices were the first clue, and dragging Sendak out to put his blessing on it was a huge red flag.

But I never thought it would be so appallingly awful. I might has gone if not for your warning, thanks you!

I will probably borrow your DVD to watch the extras about the costumes, though.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

They should have hired Missmonstermel to write and direct. At least it would have been cool fun.

I await with some dread the next potential filmic disaster: Avatar. I -want- it to be good, I do (James Cameron!), but $500,000,000!!!