Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are
Running Time: 94 minutes
Released: October 2009
Viewed: March 2010
Estimated amounted of movie viewed: 65%

Review
"See, this is why I don't have children." That's what I think, and say, at the opening of this movie, when an awkwardly aged boy runs around on the screen, pegging teenagers with snowballs and crying when his snow fort gets trounced. He's angry, he's got pent up frustration about not having any playmates around, and this is some sad stuff. Every scene, except the snowball fight, looks dark and heavy. I don't know what you call this is cinematic terminology, but it's hard on my eyes and I don't like it.

I want the boy to go to Narnia or Never-Never Land, but instead, he takes off on a sailboat and goes to where the wild things are.

After very little persuasion, the monsters decide the boy will be their king.

The wild things look heavy in their gigantic bodies, but they jump and flop around as if they are light as stuffed animals. All the monsters have stupid, human, American-English names, like Douglas. Can't they just call that guy, "Doug" or "Dougie?" They wreck everything in sight, smashing these weird cocoon things that turn out to be other monsters' houses.

And they're all really sad.

Sometimes they are pissy with one another, too. There's no cohesion among the monsters. There's nothing lovely and magical about this place.

The world is quite empty.

Days go by.

There's a beach.

It turns out that the monsters deduce that the boy is not a king and doesn't have any special powers. He gets back on his sail boat and goes back to his mom's house. As he's on his way, he starts screaming and barking again. Didn't this kid learn anything? Gah! He's still the same stupid kid who cries and bites his mom! I bet he's going to bite her right now, after he hugs her.

What a boring movie! I mean, it would be one thing if there were some allegorical parallels between the real world and the monster world. And there's no action. Maybe the writers should have thought about dramatic in there, like maybe someone could have lost a limb or something.