Review of Where the Wild Things Are

Incredible that so many people have well received this film -- it is long, dark both in visual terms -- but even worse, it is dark in emotional terms. "Where the wild things are" turns out to be a place where the animals/monsters are all passive/aggressive depressives. How do you take one of the best visualized children's stories that has only a couple of hundred words of text into a feature length movie? Answer: you don't. For whatever whimsy the book contains, it is distorted into a singular, overlong and morose personal version. I found the angst of the characters to be completely unengaging and most of all boring -- as did my four year old. Fantastic Mr. Fox is an incredible contrast -- wonderfully visualized with sufficient intellectual content to carry a feature length film -- and most importantly, upbeat and positive in outlook. The monsters in "Where the wild things are" really are analogues for unhappy, bitter adults with deep emotional problems -- YUCK!