"Wildin' Out!" -Where The Wild Things Are Review

Man WHAT was I thinking? Sunday morning I wake up earlier THINKING I was gonna beat the weekend rush of movie goers to get rudely awakened once I showed up to by tickets. My OTHER mistake was thinking it was more geared towards adults than kids (which it was). But low and behold, the theater was packed like it was a class trip up in there! True it's a classic children's book but, the book only has like 4 pages of dialogue (if even that). So Spike's (Jonze) version is more a reinterpretation than it is a screen version of the book. The movies sets up a quick paced back story of the young lead's (Max) adventure off from reality. Single parent, youngest sibling child, w a short attention span yet a vivid imagination, is the gist of Spike's "Max" in this re-telling. After lashing out due to a lack of attention, being that mom has a late evening "booty call' over, Max bounces for a walk on the "wild side." First off, the mood and tone are spot perfect to bring this story up to date & modernize this tell. Plus the "muppets" costume were EXACTLY how you would envision them to be...If they were real of course. The voice overs done by the likes of James Gandolfini ("Carol"), Forest Whitaker ("Ira"), Katherine O'Hara ("Judith") and such, were spot on witty. But somehow the sound guys mixing didn't blend it in to sound like it was coming from them naturally. But that's just my opinion. Other than that, I give it a thumbs up for a great translation to film what the book cared to leave out. I think this will be a round and last the test of time much like the book did. I giving it 3 out of 4 M's