Where the Wild Things Are

Where the Wild Things Are (2009) comes from Maurice Sendak's ten sentence picture book. Max has a tantrum, runs from the house and reaches an island of enormous creatures. They make him king. Then the film goes somewhere unexpected: the creatures are as hurt, jealous and close to falling apart as he is. The production was hard. Test footage leaked in 2008 and drew mixed reactions, and Warner Bros. pushed the release from October 2008 to October 2009. Rumours spread that children were frightened. The studio initially wanted extensive reshoots or a new director. Studio president Alan Horn eventually announced the opposite: they had given Jonze more money and more time, and they were not going to turn it into a bland sanitised studio film. Sendak defended the film throughout. After seeing it finished he said he had never seen a film that looked or felt like this. To parents who complained about its darkness his answer was shorter: go to hell, adding that he had survived worse films as a child. The creatures were built by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, combining animatronic suits with live action and digital facial work. James Gandolfini is among the voices. The budget rose from 75 to 100 million dollars, and the film grossed 100.1 million worldwide, which is to say it broke even. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: films that tell childhood from inside, stories about anger and loneliness, and Spike Jonze. Less good for: this is not a children's film, it is a film about childhood. The pace is slow, the tone is heavy, and for small children it is genuinely sad. There is almost no plot.