{"id":2811,"date":"2009-12-10T00:20:25","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T05:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=2811"},"modified":"2009-12-10T00:20:25","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T05:20:25","slug":"where-the-wild-things-are-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/10\/where-the-wild-things-are-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Where the Wild Things Are (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"2009 saw an unusual change in the status quo. What were once edgy indie filmmakers soon turned to directors aiming for children’s entertainment that was raucous and quite unusual. First Wes Anderson and then Spike Jonze. That’s no caveat though as Jonze takes his knack for the surreal and the unusual and makes a family film that’s quite edgy. Never shying away from mild violence and scary images, Jonze adapts a famous children’s book in to one of the most fantastic piece of family filmmaking ever made. Displaying hints of danger, Jonze’s film is about unbridled childhood fun and the innocence that’s lost once confronted with the prospect of growing up. Do we all have to lose our imagination from a world that demands even children to leave childish things behind?<\/p>\n

“Where the Wild Things Are” easily could have been miscast and made in to your typical soft family film; the advantage here is with Jonze who uses much of his same techniques to convey the emotions of loneliness, innocence and looming danger. The movie can often be dark and a bit alarming especially when our main characters opt on eating young Max upon his first appearance in their world. Jonze thankfully never portrays them as truly evil, only young souls who just prefer the taste of any creature that doesn’t belong to their group. Jonze’s film always has the scent of violence within its folds and he never intensifies it to scare little children.<\/p>\n

To wit the monsters are always a bit threatening but never horrifying. Jonze seems intent on displaying what carnage these monsters can inflict on their environments and yet deep down they represent unbridled youth and the elements that come with growing up. Some of the characters are never listened to, while others can tend to separate from the group to forge their own alone time. Max is able to keep up with his friends quite often but discovers that emotions can run high when entrenched in deep emotions of love and affection.<\/p>\n

The voice cast is excellent with every single respective star given their moment to shine through the eyes of their characters. The stand out, of course, is James Gandolfini who is a highlight as the deeply lonely Carol who forms a personal relationship with Max as the film progresses. Jonze doesn’t always stick true to the book but he manages to form identities out of the various lands we journey through. This is truly one of his stand out masterpieces. This is how you make a kids film, you appeal to adults and children and never tone down or talk down to your audience. You simply tell a great story and trust in them that they’ll catch on to what you’re trying to say. “Where the Wild Things Are” is an outstanding example of the rarely used method.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2009 saw an unusual change in the status quo. What were once edgy indie filmmakers soon turned to directors aiming for children’s entertainment that was raucous and quite unusual. First Wes Anderson and then Spike Jonze. That’s no caveat though as Jonze takes his knack for the surreal and the unusual and makes a family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,71,302,340,349,580,678,1013,1170],"class_list":["post-2811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-drama","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-kids","tag-monsters","tag-suspense","tag-w"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}