BEEKEEPERS SOCIETY

But this movie isn’t just an aesthetic exercise. It’s an adaptation of a beloved children’s book that means a lot to many many people. So how did that work out? Personally, I thought that it worked out so-so! I liked the meandering non-plot, and the speed with which it set up Max and with which it concluded. Let us not waste time on things that are not relevant. But I did not like Max Records that much. No offense to him, he is only a child, but he seemed less like an actual child, and more like the physical embodiment of Spike Jonze’s and Dave Egger’s obsession with the perpetuation of childhood. Like, he couldn’t just be a kid, he had to be the most clever and imaginative kid. The simple fact of his journey to the Land of the Wild Things makes him a dreamer, but the movie works very hard from the beginning to point out that this kid is a Serious, Advanced Degree dreamer. Not just your average dreamer! Which actually kind of takes some of the pleasure of his journey away from the audience, because it’s no longer “our” adventure as people who remember or are just now experiencing what it is like for a child to bump up against the world, it is Max Records’s adventure and we just get to watch. This is the type of movie that one could, theoretically, leave the movie flush with the thrill of a shared experience, but this didn’t feel shared. It felt presented.

And while we’re on the subject of Max, um, there is far less whimsy and unbridled youthful energy when the boy has actual rage issues. He travels to the Land of the Wild Things not because he is alone in his room with nothing but his imagination, but because he straight up BIT HIS MOM. That’s genuinely not OK to do. But he is our hero now? I am on the side of a boy with deep behavioral problems? If the Wild Things are an extension of is psychology, and they are, then the Wild Things are disconcertingly violent, and they need to visit a therapist maybe. They punch each other and rip each others’ arms off and throw each other through buildings and step on each others’ faces. Max’s idea of a way to cheer everyone up and bring them back together is to have a dirt clod fight where they hit each other expressly in the head, and/or knock each others’ legs out from under them. Yikes. Good thinking, Max.