Where the Wild Things Are - by Maurice Sendak - The Movie (2009)

While programming my PVR the other day I noticed that Where the Wild Things Are was on that night. I have never seen it, so I decided to record it. I remember seeing the trailer at the theatre years ago when they were advertising the movie coming out in the future and hearing the audience at the theatre gasp with excitement. Needless to say, my expectations were pretty high when I sat down to finally watch the movie with my family.

Now, I know many people are huge fans of the illustrated children's book with the same name, and I think the illustrations in the book are spectacular, but I really don't remember the story all that well. In fact, while watching the movie I tried to remember the book and couldn't remember anything but the illustrations of the characters. That being said, I won't be able to do a very fair comparison between the book and the movie until I'm able to get my hands on the book by either sitting down in a book store and reading it, borrowing it from one of many of my friends who has the book, or giving in and purchasing it for my own collection.

As far as the movie is concerned, cult followers of the story may kill me for saying this, but I wasn't all that impressed. The movie drags out and I did not find that it had a very interesting storyline. The story takes a little while to get going while they try to set up the hyperactive, loner, Max's character. You start to feel sorry for him since he seems to have serious mental issues that are not being addressed. When he finally runs away and ends up "where the wild things are", you think the story will begin to take off as the new characters are being introduced, but the story continues to be slow-moving and a bit boring. When the movie finally ended, I felt like I hadn't gotten much out of it and if someone were to ask me to retell the story to them I don't feel like I would have much to say.

The one thing I would absolutely have to say is that the costumes and animation used for the "wild things" characters were fantastic. They really were brought to life from the images I remember from the book. Kudos on that for sure!

Are you fan of the Where the Wild Things Are book?

Did you grow up reading it? If so, what were your thoughts on the movie?