Where the Wild Things Are

AroView: Expanding on the simple text of Maurice Sendak’s modern children’s classic, this glorious, visionary adaptation from director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers stands as a classic in its own right.

Taking the text into the allegorical realm of LORD OF THE FLIES, this maintains the spirit of the author’s original verse while accommodating the director’s renowned eccentricity and ambition. Slyly subversive for a “children’s film”, it confronts the complex - and sometimes unpalatable - dynamics of human relationships, but cloaks its sober realities in escapist wonderstuff - the “wild things” themselves are a dazzling hybrid of life-size animatronics, computer wizardry and the hilarious personalities of the dream cast. Jonze’s idiosyncratic, bohemian sensibility won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it’s nevertheless a cinematic gift that deserves a place in the pantheon of both children’s and fantasy cinema.