Where the Wild Things Are had to grow on me. It
wasn’t until about halfway through that I finally figured out what it was about: a character study of a young boy with a classic case of serotonin deprived depression. Max Records plays Max (well,
wasn’t that convenient), a young boy with wild mood swings of grandiose highs and debilitating lows, all out of proportion to the circumstances surrounding him, though those circumstances (he’s new to a neighborhood; no friend; child of divorce; a sister too much older than him to find him nothing but an annoyance; his mother has a new boyfriend) do add to his problematic situation. His mother, played excellently as usual by Catherine Keener,
doesn’t really understand what’s going on nor has the time to figure it out. After a particularly egregious tantrum, Max runs away, finds a boat and sails to an island of gigantic and somewhat weird puppet/animal like creatures, strongly voiced by such actors as James
Gandolfini, Catherine O’
Hara and Forest Whitaker. The film began working for me when I realized that these creatures all had similar, though even deeper and more irrational, emotional problems than Max. For the first time, Max gets to see himself as other people see him. He returns home, but it’s unclear whether this adventure has really helped him. The creatures are wonderfully animated, especially the mouths, and the music and songs are heaps of fun. The main drawback may be Spike
Jonze (who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave
Eggers) who directs the piece as if he were Paul
Greenglass doing a
Bourne film. I found myself at times trying to fill in the blanks because
Jonze had a yen for using jump cuts. But by the time it was all over, I was moved.
The Fantastic Mr. Fox is well…fabulous (bet you thought I was going to say “fantastic”,
didn’t you; please, it would be so obvious to include that word in this review). It’s as clever and fun and quirky as Babe, which is saying quite a bit. There is one rather odd aspect to it. Fox and his friends are animals who can walk, talk, reason, etc., basically humans in animal bodies. But they feed on other animals, like chickens, geese, turkeys, etc. This is rather creepy and almost comes across as cannibalism; it’s actually borderline disturbing. Of course, if one realizes that the original story is by
Roald Dahl, whose stories always did have a unique and somewhat creepy aspect to them, I suppose it
shouldn’t be very surprising that this
isn’t your typical everyday children’s film. The suave and debonair Fox is played by the suave and debonair George
Clooney. He’s actually a character I would have little to do with in real life since he’s so incredibly vain and egocentric, running roughshod over everybody else, doing whatever he wants to do when he wants to do it and if anybody else has a problem with that, too bad (he’s also pretty rotten to his son). However, that is one of the great things about art—one can spend quality time with someone one would never have anything to do with in real life from the safety of a movie seat. His longer suffering wife is played by Meryl
Streep (that makes three films in one year for both of them--aren't they the busy little bees) with an appropriately long suffering voice. The screenplay (by director Wes Anderson and the
tres droll Noah—Squid and the Whale—
Baumbach) is witty, energetic and never runs out of cleverness. The direction by Wes Anderson is ever so much the same; no scene is complete with some extra bit of visual manipulation that just gives it that something…well, extra, to make it memorable. The animation is remarkable, down to the moving hairs on the characters' face. It’s what is called sophisticated and adult; the question then is whether it will sell in the multiplex. One can only hope.
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