I must start by admitting to never having read the original 1963 children’s book. How it’s existence managed to hide from my radar, I don’t know. As strange as it is for me to admit, the first time I ever heard of the story was when The Simpsons made fun of it in a Treehouse of Horror episode years ago. So it’s safe to say that I was rather unfamiliar with the story before seeing the trailers for this film.

Where the Wild Things Are is clearly a children’s movie, but in a way, I think it could possibly be more relatable to adults. The film brings back childhood memories, when wild imaginations were allowed to roam free with the truck loads of energy children have. The main character, Max, might have too much energy. You see, even for his young age, he displays short bursts of explosive anger. As we meet him, he’s a bit of a loner. His sister is entering her teens and therefore has no time to express interest in him because she is too busy hanging out with the jerks who destroyed his manmade igloo. His response? He destroys her room and seemingly regrets it moments later.

His mother, on the other hand, has time for him but very little due to the stresses of her job and from being a single mother.  After he ruins one of her dates and she gets mad, he runs off to the woods where he finds a strange land of forrest and dessert inhabited by strange plush creatures, including Carol (James Gandolfini), Judith (Catherine O’Hara), Ira (Forest Whitaker), Douglas (Chris Cooper), and KW (Lauren Ambrose).

The creatures look like they belong in a PBS children’s show, but manage to display a wide variety of emotion, including a lot of angst. Carol is a bit destructive when he gets mad and Juliet is constantly talking about eating Max. At times, they come across as childlike and, at others, adults. In one scene, Max is scared while one of the characters bickers with the other, who is protecting him like a mother from a destructive father.

That isn’t to say kids won’t like this film. Children’s films often feel dumbed down, despite usually having a wide load of suggestive humor. Often the darker implications are tossed away in fear that younger audiences may not like it. Here, those darker elements are mixed in with the story and allowed to breath.

The look of this film is just beautiful. The landscape and the design of the creatures go hand and hand, bringing a nice artistic look to the film. The creatures themselves mix techniques of both past and present by using costumes for the body and CGI for the facial expressions. The result is a group of large plush toys that live and breath in a world with large dogs and owls that tell jokes with hoots.

Where the Wild Things Are is a beautifully dark film that kids may or may not be turned off from, but it delivers a rich combination f imagination and emotion, which often goes hand and hand.

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