Watch this jungle conversation between Lisa and Owen and find out who’s wild and who’s mild about the weekend’s biggest movie!
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Comments (1-15) of 105 Add your comment
YAY all the way. An absolutely beautiful movie that gets to the sometimes ugly truths of being a lonely wild child. An Max Records is flat-out fabulous!
I agree – I loved the movie and thought his performance was really great. I don’t get all the anger directed at this movie – it’s just a movie. There is no way it could stay true to the book – it was a short book with no real dialog. I think Spike Jonze was a brilliant choice (Steven Speilberg would have made this a total kiddie movie) and I loved the score. I can’t wait to see it again.
I agree with Owen. And, I think the movie romanticized white boy angst. its something i don’t understand. i didn’t find it child like at all. it felt like some dirty hipster was trying to retell his childhood in cool way without looking like he was trying. and the parallels to colonization were disturbing.
White boy angst? Seriously?
yeah only black boy angst matters, cause of slavery y’know, all white people don’t have problems or grow up poor. we’re all born rich right?
Colonization? Seriously?
yup. folks sound a little defensive here. it’s the way i saw it. and I said nothing of black boy angst or poor people. nor did i say one matters more than others. i just don’t get white boy angst. colonization? yes. there’s something about a white guy crossing a great ocean and happening upon these “wild things” and declaring himself king, starting a war, and building a great monument to his liking that is like colonization to me. just the way i experienced it.
Mar,
Are you really saying that you read into it being about race and not a plot devise showing Max’s journey into his mind/emotions? AND the wild things that he is trying to be king of are not his out of control emotions but black people.
First of all I don’t know how most black people would feel about you viewing they as out of control wild things. Secondly I can’t relate to your black boy angst.
To me it’s about a person trying to learn how to master themselves.
I can see the colonization aspect of the movie. Max could’ve been Capt. Cook and the wild things could’ve been Hawaiians. At first the wild things embrace their King but then after they find out he is a fake–they rebel against him. This is exactly what happened to Capt. Cook. The Hawaiians killed him too. But does the colonization aspect reduce the quality of the film? I don’t think so. I still think Where The Wild Things Are is still one of the best movies of the year.
white boy? wtf!?
I couldn’t watch all of this. She won’t let him finish a sentence!
I never agreee with her.
YES! Lisa gets on my nerves and her reviews irk me. This movie was horrible.
hi ben! . . . . .
I was thinking the same thing! How are we supposed to know what he thinks when she won’t let him talk?… she totally dominated that conversation; how very unprofessional.
I Love Lisa, she SHOULDN’T let him finish any sentence. Owen is officially and idiot. I mean after how he defended the garbage that was Transformers 2?! Clearly he no longer knows jack-shhh about what a good movie is or isn’t. At least we still have Lisa to argue some sense into him.
Could not have agreed more with Lisa. She is 100% accurate in everything she says… Owen, is officially an idiot.
Given that these things are subjective, I don’t think we can say that Lisa is “100% accurate in everything she says” any more than we can cast the Idiot stone in sentences with superfluous commas.
I agree with you Jason (and I hated the movie!) but those are not superfluous commas, they are ellipses. I love them, they imply so much….
I meant the comma after Owen.
I love ellipses, too.
Jason, I love when people correct grammar and spelling on message boards. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Given that they say “Lisa is 100% accurate in what she says” right after stating that he “could not have agreed with her more”, I think we all understood the subjective part. Thanks though. By the way, do you need some work as a college essay proofreader? I would like that very much and it would be a much more useful avenue for your talent.
Saw this movie 3 times over the weekend and my final verdict: IT SUCKED…
…then why did you see it three times?
Saw the movie 3 times this weekend and my final verdict: It stunk…
so, you went three times over a three day period, but you say it sucked.
Was it that close to being a good movie for you, did you have to take three groups of people who absolutely relied on you to see it, or do you have short-term memory problems?
Given that you posted what was essentially the same sentence twice, I’m going to go with the latter.
Haha. Truth.
Jason, you are right-on!
YAYYYY! The movie had such an effect on me — I’ve been thinking about it non-stop for the past three days — it’s beautiful, complicated, funny, and intensely provoking.
Anyone who starts a review with “YAYYY!” should have their opinion IGNORED.
Thank You, Owen! I couldn’t believe how let down I was. So much potential, but turned out to be dull, plodding, & segmented. No flow whatsoever, completely yawn-endusing. The opening 10-minutes with Max, his Mom, and the igloo were great, but it was all downhill after that.
It was an incredible, beautiful movie. If you didn’t like it, that’s fine – go see Paul Blart II or whatever. The movie was gorgeously filmed, cast, scored…a triumph.
How does not liking this movie equate with being a fan of low-brow movies like Paul Blart? I love indie movies and studio films, but this movie was slow, plodding, and, while visually stunning, lacking of substance. While I understand Lisa’s points, I don’t think it is worth the praise. This doesn’t mean I like studio pap like Paul Blartt.
Exactly. I get that the movie really speaks to some people and that’s great–and for the record I tend to like slow, “arty” films. But I’m already tired of people saying that if you didn’t like this movie you’re not in touch with yourinner child, you’re not deep, etc, etc, bla bla
What is wild about a bunch of depressed monsters moping around to the Juno soundtrack? As usual, Lisa completely lacks perspective.
Yay for Wild Things from me.
I agree with Owen. And Liza needs to learn to shut up and stop interrupting when someone else is talking.
Yes, she got old really fast and didn’t allow Owen to share his perspective. She argued everything without hearing his point.
Right on, Ben. How can you have a “dialogue” when you’re not even listening to the other person’s perspective? It all seemed one-sided to me.
The plot didn’t meander…Max saw himself and his family in the wild things. And “narrative”…..is there. Owen didn’t see it because he didn’t understand what was happening (clearly). For instance, Carol IS Max. KW IS is sister. His sister’s friends (the owls) are her friends…older than Max and starting to be interested in girls. Max isn’t there yet…boys at that age he doesn’t understand. The wild things are a reflection. I saw it immediately…bringing context to the story and progression to the film. Brilliant, subtle, artful film making…almost not of this era.
THANK YOU..I was waiting for someone to bring a similar light to this movie. That’s exactly what I saw…the boy was in his “fantasy world” and saw these monsters as reflections of his family.
I wish people would give this movie more credit. The took a ten page storybook and made a handful of characters with it, all with the freeing permission of the author.
I got it. I saw all of that and I didn’t like the movie.
It felt like it made everything up as it went along. Whenever it came time to explain something, it went off on some strange scene that made no sense. They try to get away with it because thats how “the mind works” NO.
If you want to impress me finish what you start. Im tired of filmmakers not explainging things. Its the easy way out by saying its “a dream” or “fantasy”
If Max was like Carol and KW was like his sister then there was some kind of incest theme in the movie because it seemed to me that Carol had a crush on KW.
I completely agree with Lisa, but the two people I saw it with agreed with Owen. I thought of Carol and the goat as reflections of Max and KW was a combination of his mother and sister. Carol is wild and irrational and the goat is little and ignored. Max’s time on the island lets him see his home dynamics from the outside. A very grown up theme, and I wouldn’t have been happy if it was just wild haphazard rumpus.
OscarsBoss is dead on – Carol is Max and KW is the sister. My 15 year old son and all his teen friends saw it, understood it the same way I did, and loved it. It was my wild boy’s favorite book as a child, and he felt like the movie really touched who he is and who he was as a wild boy.
It isn’t calculus. What’s to figure out? We know what its about. and I still did not like it.