Where The Wild Things Are

I remember Max in his wolf suit tearing through a bedroom that changed into a jungle populated by monstrous creatures who turned out to be rather friendly. And in that imagined jungle, Max and his creature friends began their wild rumpus.

The book was Where The Wild Things Are, written by Maurice Sendak, and it remains one of my favorite reads from my childhood.

Spike Jonze, the crazy genius behind Being John Malkovich, manages to preserve the beautiful essence of that book in his screen version.

Max is played by newcomer Max Records, and the movie fills out the thin volume of pictures and words it is based on. Max has a mother (Catherine Keener) struggling to raise her son and daughter, balance her career and date.

Max is a rambunctious child, struggling with all those intoxicating emotions most nine-year-old boys are apt to have. He is needy and independent, his loneliness assuaged by his wandering imagination.

One night, Max acts a fool, standing on the kitchen counter in his wolf suit while his mother tries to spend time with her boyfriend. He bites her on the shoulder and runs out into the street.

He sees a boat on water and sails to a faraway island where he meets those creatures, who at first want to eat him up but stop when he announces that he is a king with great power.

And this is when the wild rumpus begins.

Max runs wild with these creatures, led by Carol (voiced by a profanity-abstinent James Gandolfini). Rounding out the cast of monsters are KW (Lauren Ambrose), Judith (Catherine O'Hara), Alexander (Paul Dano), and Ira (Forest Whitaker), and Douglas (Chris Cooper).

For awhile, they all run through the jungle, causing fun-filled destruction. But underneath the fun is dysfunction, just like the dysfunction Max was running away from.

And this is where Spike Jonze, with help from a script written by Dave Eggers, shines, embodying his movie with both fantasy and raw emotion.

This is a kid's movie in lots of ways but it isn't. There are scary moments of disturbing behavior and circumstance.

Max isn't some lovable cute child. He's real, at least the way Max Records plays him, full of rage and immaturity, lost in the confusion of his life.

And the monsters have their own deep-seated insecurities, particularly Carol, full of jealous anger and an unbearable sadness.

I don't know how Spike Jonze did it but the movie somehow works, the fantasy and the reality all mixed together some kind of filmic stew. This world feels real even if it is only the result of Max's imagination.

And we, the audience, allow ourselves to be carried along on Max's journey fueled by pain and loneliness and the need we all have to know we are loved.

The movie ends, as the book does, with Max coming home to a hot bowl of soup, safe, loved, happy. Just as I was when I left the movie.