Surreal, but good. ( )

9-year-old Max (Max Records) stomps around the house, feeling neglected. When his mom (Catherine Keener) sends him to bed without supper, Max runs away (something he doesn't do in the book). He finds a boat and sails to a distant land where fuzzy monsters are raising a rumpus in the forest. Since his wolf suit allows him to fit right in, he joins the fray, catching the eye of Carol (James Gandolfini), who notes, approvingly, "I like the way you destroy stuff. There's a spark to your work that can't be taught." With that, they pronounce the diminutive creature king, hoping he can bring cohesion to their fractured family. After Max comes across Carol's scale-model town, he decides they should build a real one, but the project stalls as Alexander (Paul Dano) and Douglas (Chris Cooper) mope, Judith (Catherine O'Hara) browbeats Ira (Forest Whitaker), and Carol pines for K.W. (Lauren Ambrose), who prefers the company of owls Bob and Terry. Max realizes he has to make a choice: stay with the wild things or return home, where he has to keep his aggressive impulses in check.

A boy goes to an island of emotional monsters.

Beautiful and intense. Really f***ing intense.

Concept: A
Story: B
Characters: A
Dialog: A
Pacing: A
Cinematography: A
Special effects/design: A
Acting: A
Music: A

Enjoyment: A plus

GPA: 4.0/4 ( )

After a fight with his mother, Max runs away and ends up on the island of the Wild Things, where he learns that even a king cannot always make everything perfect. It is difficult to make a movie based on a picture book, but Spike Jonze does it well here. This movie fleshes out the original book and gives it a new depth that older children and even adults will appreciate. The viewer discovers that Max is a child of divorced parents and that he has a teenage sister who is no longer his best friend. These end up being crucial to Jonze’s story—Max tries to make everything perfect, for his mother and then for his friends the Wild Things, only to discover that this is impossible. Tweens and teens who are learning this lesson in their own lives will find this especially powerful. The visual imagery combines puppetry, CGI, and live acting, blending fantasy and reality seamlessly to allow a suspension of disbelief like no other. This is a beautiful movie that takes the picture book and makes it a real bildungsroman for older children. ( )