The Boy King
Max imagines a land populated by strange creatures who make him their king
By Marni Weisz
The picture book Where the Wild Things Are may only be 10 sentences long, but that doesn’t mean the story isn’t complex enough to fill out an entire feature film. After all, it’s a book that tweaks your imagination, and then your brain fills in the rest. Well, in this case, we get to see how the filmmakers’ brains filled in the rest.
The movie revolves around little Max, who makes all sorts of trouble when his mother’s boyfriend comes over for dinner. So he’s sent to his room until he can learn to behave. Have we mentioned that Max is dressed in a wolf costume? He’s obviously an imaginative kid.
Then Max’s room starts to transform into a forest, with trees and vines and an ocean. He sails across that ocean to an island full of monsters. Those would be the Wild Things. But Max isn’t scared of the Wild Things. He looks them straight in their eyes and they respect him for it. In fact, they make him their king. Now all that’s left to do is get to know these strange beasts. What an opportunity for little Max! Will he ever want to return home?
Where the Wild Things Are opens October 16