Max imagines running away from his mom and sailing to a far-off land where large talking beasts—Ira, Carol, Douglas, the Bull, Judith and Alexander—crown him as their king, play rumpus, build forts and discover secret hideaways.
Intellectually interesting, visually arresting and filled with invention, there's just one crucial thing Where the Wild Things Are is missing: wildness.
– Tom Long,
Detroit News,
16 Oct 2009
rotten:
Wild Things, you do not make my heart sing.
– Liam Lacey,
Globe and Mail,
16 Oct 2009
fresh:
[Jonze has] achieved with the cinematic medium what Sendak did with words and pictures: He's grasped something true and terrifying about love at its most unconditional and voracious.
– Ann Hornaday,
Washington Post,
16 Oct 2009
fresh:
'Where the Wild Things Are' stands out for its unusually potent evocation of the timbre of childhood imagining, with its combination of the outre and the banal, grand schemes jumbled up with delicate feelings and the urge to smash things up.