WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

The book was written in 1963. I studied it in a graduate school course on children’s literature in 1971.
It is a masterpiece and it only has ten sentences in the entire book.
That may be the problem with the movie.
Working from a base of only ten sentences, director Spike Jonze has turned Maurice Sendak’s, “Where The Wild Things Are,” into a one hour and 44 minute movie.
I love the book. I think the movie is very creative, very artistic, has great production values; you can see no expense was too great for this production.
Yet, the movie did not connect with me.
Filling all that time with only ten lines of guidance created directions that were different from my conception of the story and I was not comfortable with what I was seeing.
As my 35 year old son put it, I was given steak, when I wanted hamburger.
This was a quality film, but not to my liking. I can’t fault the filmmakers, with only ten lines to build on, they did a good job, just not to my vision and maybe not to that of many in the audience.
This is not a feel good story, it has serious issues and dark themes.