Review of Where the Wild Things Are (2009) by Annie R — 16 Oct 2013

The movie Where the Wild Things Are is about a boy named Max and his adventures in the land of the wild things. The movie starts with Max having a big fight with his mom and sailing off to the land of the wild things. When Max arrives, he meets several monsters like Carol and K.W. He becomes friends with them and all the other wild things who crown him the king. As king, Max has a wild rumpus where they go destroy trees, dance around, tackle each other and have fun. Eventually the wild things become unhappy with the job Max is doing as their king and Max becomes nervous that the wild things will discover he's just a boy pretending to be king. During this adventure, Max learns a lot from the wild things and discovers what is most important to him.

I think one of the major themes in the movie is that even if families disagree, love still exists and it's always important to forgive. Many toddlers and little kids grew up reading the famous children book written by Maurice Sendak, but in my opinion, the movie is not really appropriate for really young kids because there are some scary scenes. I think the movie is appropriate for kids 10 and up. The director did a great job of expanding the ideas from the book and reading between the lines and going into a lot more detail in the movie. He really showed the monsters personalities and stayed true to the story from the book.

I would give the movie an 8.5 out of 10 because it stayed true to the book, was very well acted and made the viewer feel many different feelings throughout the movie but I would definitely not recommend the movie to kids younger than 10 years old.