I saw the new hype movie "Where The Wild Things Are" this Sunday. I was very impressed with many things.
The costumes were very nice, including the CGI expressions-- seamless.
The atmosphere was very calm at the best of times, soothing and natural.
The music selection was charming and enhanced the film, even if it was a little emo-ballad-y.
The scenery was also gorgeous, being filmed in Australia.
The characters and overall plot of the movie was well-developed and spurs the mind.

The of the five above gets to me a bit. We're talking about a movie based on a ten-sentence picture book that many kids read at ages 3-6. Let's review this, shall we?

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In Maurice Sendak's whimsical children's book, Max, a rambunctious little boy, is sent to his room for some sort of misdeed. He imagines his room a new world, and a group of large, ugly monsters threaten to eat him up. He manages to subdue them with claims of being a king and having awesome powers, and they all celebrate with a 'wild rumpus'. In the nighttime, he becomes lonely and goes to sail back home. The monsters awake, threatening and begging him to stay. He coldly turns them away and goes home. He then eats supper. That is that.

There are several pages where there are little to no words, and there's only three of four blurbs of dialogue. For a book so built on simplicity and imagination, the monsters never stopped talking and complaining.
"Can you keep the sadness out?" one monster inquires to Max. He responds with claims of having a sadness-shield that will protect them all.
This is clearly not the case.

The monsters are reflections of Max's feelings-- they reflect and magnify three-fold.
There's Carol, the supposed leader of the group, he is aggressive and wild and a bit immature. He seems to have a thing for KW, and is close with Max.
KW is next, a feminine version of Carol. She has two owl friends named Bob and Terry that neither Max nor Carol understand.
Next comes Douglas, a mo-hawked rooster of a creature who is seemingly the most sensible of the group. He (tries) to keep Carol in check, who in his gratitude rips off one of his arms. Poor Douglas is left with a stick as a replacement.
Then there's Judith, a sarcastic, cranky rhino-like beast that seems to be jealous of the relationship between Max and Carol.
Irah is an interesting one. Arguably the ugliest of the monsters with his protruding nose and man-boobs, he's also the dullest. He puts holes in trees, and that's about it. No real emotion seems to radiate from him, other than the fact that he tolerates Judith very well and, in fact, loves her.
Last is the Bull. A tad bigger than the others, he sort of just skulks around, appearing on-screen every now and then. At Max's departure at the end of the film, though he does have a few brief words with the Non-king, curious if Max will say nice things about the Wild Things upon his return home.

I'm not sure where to go with this now.
I enjoyed the movie very much aside from the unresolved ending. Max left with an air of discovery, as if he realized what he had to do, how he had to act.
Alas, one cannot shake the feeling that the monsters deserve more, even if they were a figment of Max's imagination, as they are left on the shore with CGI expressions of grief upon their howling faces.

Side notes and questions:
So apparently if you run away from home after biting your mom and causing a fuss, you get soup and chocolate cake when you get back? The end scene was one of the few parts of the movie where it would have been okay to have extra dialogue.
Did anybody else feel that Max's sister should have been included at the end as well? It would have really brought it together a bit more, I feel.