Where the Wild Things Are (WTWTA) is a terrible movie. This post is for Paal. SPOILER ALERT.
WTWTA is a terrible movie because it fails in three regards:
1. It is a crappy children's movie.
2. It is a lame "art" movie.
3. It was boooooooooring.
A successful children's movie has several elements. First, lovable characters. Second, a strong, goal-driven plot. And three, a positive, uplifting theme, message, or moral. Take
The Wizard of Oz (TWOO) for example, it is a great children's movie. Dorothy, our heroine, is a charming young woman. The three friends she meets on her journey are equally lovable. Sure, the Cowardly Lion kind of blows, but he's last so you don't have to put up with him for long. Dorothy has a clear goal: to make it home again. On the way she explores an enchanting land and learns the value of friendship. The film is uplifting. It is also suspenseful. Dorothy faces some obstacles in her journey making her return all the more moving.
WTWTA, unlike TWOO, is an awful children's movie. WTWTA's protagonist Max is an obnoxious brat. His monster friends are whiny and melodramatic. Not one of the monsters is consistently cool or funny through out the film. That Goat sucks. The Bird sucks. The Bull is useless. They are not likeable. Max's journey has little purpose. He's mad at his mom. He runs away to his happy place. He finds that place sucks. He goes home eventually. And what uplifting message is there?
"You can't make people be civil to one another."
"Things don't always work out."
"If you treat your mom like shit and ruin her night she'll be glad to see you and give you chocolate cake."
Bahh!
Garbage.Some people view WTWTA as an "art" film. For simplicity, I'll define an art film as a movie with the following features:
A wandering protagonist
Layers of apparent symbolism
Strong visuals and music
A sense of possibility
Moral ambiguity
Minimalist plot
Examples of this type of art film would be:
Vanishing Point,
Lost Highway, and
Morvern Callar.
WTWTA fails as an art film because it still tries to be a movie for children. Although the visuals and soundtrack to the movie are admittedly strong, the other failings dash any hope of WTWTA being regarded as a strong art film. Yes, Max is a wandering protagonist, exploring the world of his imagination through his unique view. But it soon becomes apparent there is little about his world to find surprising or intriguing. As soon as he leaves for his island, the viewer knows he will eventually return home. His aimless wanderings between these two plot points lack any scenes of interest and are bogged down by some terribly heavy-handed symbolism. A good art film doesn't batter you over the head with its symbols. WTWTA does. There are painfully obvious parallels between the snowball fight and the dirt clump fight. The quarreling monsters are obvious representations of Max's parents or Max and his mother.
I will concede that the part where he's in a monster's stomach was clever and unexpected. The rest sucked.
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, WTWTA is a terrible movie because it's boring. The film starts fresh and exciting for the first 20 or so minutes with an experience of the world through a nine year old's eyes. I believe the most interesting scenes were those early in the film. Perhaps my favorite shot in the entire picture is of Max lying beneath a table, tugging on his mother's stockinged feet. But this doesn't last as the film follows Max to his magical place which is devoid of fun and totally sucks. It is simply NOT ENTERTAINING. Whiny monsters with regular people voices? Please! And the whole "hey let's smash things" gets tired after about five minutes. Then the movie just drags for an hour before finally ending. I didn't like Max much to begin with but by the time he runs home I find that I loathe him. Monsters should have gobbled him up.
What would have made a better movie?
Max gets mad at his mom.
Max wishes she would disappear.
Max runs off to a magical island.
Max has a wild time eating popcorn and watching mobster movies with new monster friends.
Max's mom misses him.
Burglars show up to the island.
Max's mom looks for him.
Max fights off the burglars with the help of his monster friends.
Max sees him mom again and they make up.
THE END
Also:
Who imagines their fantasy world to be populated by losers that mope around all the time?
Labels: Movies, Sean
