I’ve seen lots of movies made for kids, but I haven’t seen that many that are really about being a kid. Movies recast children as precocious dispensers of unlikely wisdom or junior wisecrackers, their youthful sass punched til its a series of Borscht Belt one-liners. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Movie characters of often idealized, fantasy versions of ourselves, and it’s no more necessary for the Our Gang styled marauders in short pants that race through kiddie movies to be paragons of verisimilitude than it is for us to witness Indiana Jones filling out his sabbatical paperwork before jetting across the land in search of archeological treasure. Still, as with our adult characters, it’s more meaningful when we can believe that the children onscreen are real people dealing with real concerns. The film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved story Where the Wild Things Are perfectly captures what childhood is, what it feels like. It could have easily been an overblown cartoon made live, the bounding monsters that Max befriends after an argument with his mother depicted as joyous pals who teach him some pat life lesson. Instead, they’re reflections of Max’s own combustible emotions, extensions of the earlier scenes which depict with care how sadness over being ignored can become enraged aggression faster than anyone could control, or how the elation of unhinged play can turn into forlorn dejection in a suddenly scary moment. Max, like most kids, has stronger feelings than he knows what to do with, and they shift and change within him so quickly. Jonze fully understands and properly conveys the important detail that’s always been at the heart of Sendak’s enduring story: Max is the wildest thing of all.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)