In at least four months, no piece of "news" has bombarded my desk with the furious intensity of reports a few days ago that a trailer for Where the Wild Things Are had been released and was available on the internet. Everyone on Earth wanted to make sure that there was no chance I would miss out on the trailer, and more importantly, every report was delivered by someone simply giddy at the opportunity to let me in on their own excitement as well.
For more months than I care to recall, I've been forced to listen to critics and the general public alike as they drooled all over this project. With the release of every image from the film came more and more unbridled fawning, and the film world has unanimously gone fanboy. Each picture was more filled with awesomeness than the last, and the glorious praises of everything to do with the bare idea of the film hasn't slowed a bit.
Beyond just the love of the book, the Spike Jonze love has been a big part of things as well.
Well, I've had enough now, and I'm just going to have to declare that the Emperor has no clothes.
This article is already longer than the source material for a start, and beyond the mere technical brevity, the "story" is barely a sentence or two at best. Now, such material, especially in the realm of children's books, can be made into workable films. The Polar Express isn't too bad. Some Dr. Seuss works have been pretty good, and the ones that were bad, weren't necessarily bad in a theoretical way. But, Where the Wild Things Are has no meat on it at all. It's a great children's book, and countless kids love it, but there's no story really.
Assuming a 90-minute run, at least 70 minutes of that time is going to be screenplay fill. It's basically the same sort of game as, for example, The Polar Express. A lot of nonsense and side stories are thrown in for our trip on the train, because we've got to have some way to last through a feature-length run. Does it work? Well, it doesn't matter. For some it may, for others it may not. What's relevant is that in the end you haven't really watched a movie that in any serious sense is the same story. In fact, as far as I'm concerned the original story is rather lost in the shuffle. It doesn't have anything like the power or interest of the original work.
Maybe that's all irrelevant to a certain extent, but the idea of being excited for a release seems to presuppose that one has at least some clue what that excitement aims at. That's just folly here. Except in the vaguest way, no one has any idea what's going to come of this film, and there's certainly no way to believe it will be any good. Making things worse in this particular case is the fact that the story really has no ultimate arc. He imagines he goes. He whoops it up. He comes back. Where we go with the filler for that story is anyone's guess. Just as in the case of The Polar Express, it is inconceivable that the filler for the movie was somehow predictable from the original story. It might have been anything, and it was.
Now, as I said, another angle to the hoopla of fabulosity is the fact that Spike Jonze is directing and getting writing credit. Jonze apparently has a following as loyal and difficult to understand as Joss Whedon. Whedon fans of course will rip your face off without a moment's hesitation at the slightest suggestion that he isn't the greatest thing to ever happen, but let's face it, his claim to fame is making the utterly goofy sell well. Jonze is actually perhaps a step below, but his fans are just as rabid. Despite having directed music videos, the laughably moronic Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation (a fine film, but not particularly for the direction), his only other credit of note is producing Jackass for film and television. That somehow comes together as a resume that makes me explode with joy at the idea of his helming the translation of a children's book?
Enough already. At best we're going to get a decent, fun-filled translation that manages a bit of adventure and perhaps makes some point or other. That is perhaps nothing to sneeze at, but we are not witness to the dawning of the next golden age of cinema.
Stop trying to get quoted, and stop living in the fantasy world where... well, no, I'm losing myself there. Does it look really cool? Frankly, not particularly. It looks rather on the goofy side in parts, but I supsect the trailer was dubbed, "Completely covered in awesome sauce!" before it was even viewed.
If it turns out to be a great movie, fair enough. What a treat that will be honestly. I'd love it if this turned out to be a classic that children of all ages could enjoy for years to come. But, the hype is nonsensical, and based on nothing but shiny memories, which have little to do with the particular story and are as vague and fuzzy as the details of this film.
What's next? Goodnight Moon?
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About Marc Eastman
Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.
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