WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

 

Publicity poster for Where The Wild Things Are (© Spike Jonze/Legendary Pictures/Village Roadshow Pictures/Wild Things Productions/Playtone/Warner Bros. Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 12 June 2019, I watched on DVD the fantasy movie Where The Wild Things Are – that's 97 minutes of my life I'll never get back!

Directed by Spike Jonze, and released in 2009, Where The Wild Things Are was inspired by the famous award-winning children's picture book of the same title, which was originally published in 1963 in French (with its first English translation appearing in 1967). It was written and exquisitely illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and is a book that I've always loved.

However, the intrinsic problem faced by anyone trying to convert it into a movie is that this book is basically a series of gorgeous pictures, with few words and minimal associated story.

In it, a young boy named Max (played by Max Records in the movie), wearing his favourite wolf costume, is naughty one evening, so his mother (played by Catherine Keener) banishes him to his bedroom, inside which, inexplicably, a forest grows and a sea develops, on which Max sails in his boat until he reaches a land where the monstrous and highly ferocious Wild Things live. But after he stares them in the eye, they make him their leader, they all cavort together for a while, then Max leaves them, travelling back in his boat until he re-enters his bedroom, where there is no longer a forest but there is a piping hot supper waiting for him. The end.

Consequently, in order to make a feature-length movie based upon this briefest of plots, a much more detailed, extensive storyline needs to be devised. Unfortunately, however, the one that was devised – and which also introduces additional characters, including Adrian (Mark Ruffalo), the boyfriend of Max's mother (unnamed in the book but christened Connie in the movie) – is imho truly abysmal, repetitive, and mind-numbingly dull. So much so, in fact, that halfway through Where The Wild Things Are,  I had to pause the DVD, go off some place where they most definitely were not, and do something else for an hour or so, in order to wake up my stupefied brain before subjecting it to the second half of this film's slumber-inducing tedium. If you're looking for a cure for insomnia, here it is!

To my mind, this movie seems to have been aimed at an audience of four-year-olds with the attention span of a gnat, because it consists of a series of disjointed scenes of imbecilic, infantile content that its creators presumably thought that such children would enjoy, which in turn makes the film's PG rating both unexpected and in my view wholly unnecessary – no-one would surely keep awake long enough to be frightened by it!

The Wild Things were represented by humans in enormous suits, whereas CGI or traditionally animated monsters would have been much more effective, especially as the source material is a picture book famed for its detailed hand-drawn illustrations.

All in all, Where The Wild Things Are was for me a very disappointing experience, and also a very depressing one – the monsters were inexplicably unhappy throughout the movie. And quite creepy at times too, calling to mind some bizarre hybrid of H.R. Pufnstuf and The Wicker Man! Indeed, at one point I half expected to see Max and his huge Wild Thing companion walk around a corner near the cliff face and be confronted by a giant wicker man, with all of the other Wild Things assembled there, ready to capture Max and place him inside it!

Not even Tom Hanks, who didn't star in it but did serve as a co-producer, could inflate this flat fantasy for me. I'm sorry, but, at least as far as I'm concerned, Where The Wild Things Are is a very weird but not in any way wonderful movie. Or, to use a 1960s music-inspired metaphor: Wild Things, I think I love you – NOT!!

Nevertheless, you may feel differently, so please click here to watch an official trailer for Where The Wild Things Are on YouTube, and make up your own mind.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

 

Published in 1988, this is my 25^th Anniversary hardback edition of Maurice Sendak's beautifully-illustrated book Where The Wild Things Are (© Maurice Sendak/The Bodley Head – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

THE WICKER MAN (1973)

Publicity poster for The Wicker Man: The Final Cut, a 40^th-anniversary extended restoration of the original cinema-released version of this movie, which in 2013 was shown in cinemas and also released on DVD (© Robin Hardy/British Lion Films/StudioCanal)

On 10 June 2019, I watched the official DVD of The Director's Cut version of the cult 1970s British folk horror movie The Wicker Man, containing several extra minutes of restored footage that had been cut from the 89-minute-long cinema-released version. In fact, as I duly discovered, there is nothing spectacular present in that additional footage, but it does enhance the continuity of certain scenes.

NB – The remainder of this review contains spoilers, so please do not read any further if you don't want to know the plot of this movie.

Directed by Robin Hardy, released in 1973, with a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, and inspired by David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual, The Wicker Man is a fascinating movie, unquestionably. Yet, ironically for such a famous horror film, there is a conspicuous lack of horror until the climactic 10 minutes or so. This is when all suddenly becomes hideously clear to poor deluded Police Sergeant Neil Howie (played by Edward Woodward), a devout Christian from the Scottish mainland, as he witnesses the gigantic hollow Wicker Man awaiting him, in which he is to be imprisoned and then burnt alive within it as a human sacrifice, together with a collection of similarly imprisoned livestock sacrifices.

The inhabitants of the small, remote Hebridean island of Summerisle, and most especially their ruling Lord (played by Christopher Lee), have been playing Sgt Howie for a fool, in every sense, ever since he arrived there in search of a supposed missing child, Rowan Morrison. There was no missing child, Rowan was simply hidden – but had served as a decoy to lure him to Summerisle. This is because as he is still a virgin despite his age, as he is also in their eyes a fool, yet by representing the Law he has what they deem to be the power of a king, and as he came to Summerisle voluntarily, the pagan islanders consider him to have fulfilled all four of their nature gods' crucial requirements for constituting the perfect sacrifice needed by them in their bid to gain the gods' benevolence and thus procure from them a bountiful fruit crop next year, following several years of failed crops. Or at least, this is what they hope.

Prior to that dramatic scene, however, the movie plays along in a very tongue-in-cheek, nudge-nudge, wink-wink manner. Indeed, it even veers dangerously towards Carry On-style farce on occasion, particularly in scenes featuring the gorgeous and frequently disrobed Britt Ekland as the Green Man pub landlord's voluptuous daughter, Willow MacGregor. However, the truly horrifying Wicker Man denouement fully vindicates what would have otherwise been an outrageously unwarranted 15 certificate.

So, The Wicker Man is not so much a movie of two halves as one of 9/10ths vs 1/10th, or thereabouts. Nevertheless, it is certainly a unique, enthralling film, totally compelling throughout, but never more so than in those scenes featuring Lee's suavely sinister Lord of this pagan dominion (Lee considered The Wicker Man to be his best movie), scenes that are extended in The Director's Cut. Try to picture a Scottish Saruman, and you'll get the idea. Highly recommended.

Incidentally, this movie includes 13 folk songs, some of which are traditional, others specially composed for it by Paul Giovanni. Notable among these is 'Willow's Song', a very haunting ballad sung by Britt Ekland's eponymous character, but with Rachel Verney, not Ekland, providing her singing voice. Click here to listen to it on YouTube. A number of music acts have released covers of this song, and British indie rock group the Mock Turtles released their own version, entitled 'The Willow Song' (click here to listen to it), a track that first appeared on their 1989 4-track 'Wicker Man' 12" EP but which remains my favourite song recorded by them.

Celebrating the 1973 cinema release's 40^th anniversary, in 2013 an extended version of this movie entitled The Wicker Man: The Final Cut was screened in cinemas and also released on DVD. It is longer than the 1973 version but slightly shorter than The Director's Cut version. Moreover, the 1973 version is not the original, which was considerably longer, until upon its studio's pre-release insistence more than 20 minutes of footage (mostly consisting of mainland-based scenes) were excised. Eventually, a 99-minute version resulted. Following suggestions by American film producer Roger Corman during a pre-release screening of it, however, this was then edited down to 87 minutes, and it is this latter version that was finally released. Tragically, the original full-length version was subsequently lost and has never been found. Conversely, the 99-minute version was actually available to purchase in VHS home videocassette format during the 1980s and 1990s in the USA, but not in the UK.

(In 2006, an American remake was released, starring Nicholas Cage as the investigating cop and with its setting relocated to an island off the coast of Washington state, but imho the less said about that movie, the better…)

If you've never seen The Wicker Man (how is that even possible??), be sure to click here to watch an official trailer on YouTube that will surely fire up your interest!

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

Front cover of the official DVD of The Wicker Man: The Director's Cut, as owned by me (© Robin Hardy/British Lion Films/StudioCanal)