Shy Alexander (Little Miss Sunshine's Paul Dano) is Max's longing to be heard, as well as his fragile naïveté. Gentle Ira (Forest Witaker), is Max's artistic ideals. Loudmouth Judith (Catherine O'Hara, a scene stealer) is Max's brazen independence. He's Max's pent-up frustration, creativity and longing for love. Take the imposing, but enthusiastic Carol (James Gandolfini, aka Tony Soprano), for instance. This doesn't make him a bad person, but it does make him humble and endearing when coming across what he sees and experiences with the titular 'Wild Things.' Speaking of which, these creatures not only look great, but are also something of (which has been made abundantly clear by most of the critics, but it's still there) a representation of Max himself. He's angry, bratty, imaginative, playful, greedy, attention-seeking, kind and all those other things a normal kid is. He doesn't pander to the audience or become cloying and 'pwe-shuss' at any point in the movie.

The performances in this movie are stellar. It's a simple story, but, as said before, they get across a lot with what they have. The story is pretty much the same: Max, (Max Records, believably a kid), an imaginative, but frustrated kid gets into a fight with his stressed-out mother (Catherine Keener), runs away, and soon finds himself floating to a strange land, wherein dwell creatures that are both terrifying and fascinating at the same time. The effort is an interesting and impressive venture No embellishment, no sugarcoating, just a stripped- down, but still whimsical tale of a child's curiosity and imagination. So, naturally, director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers had to go out on a limb with the extra effort if they were to successfully make a movie based on it. The funny thing about the latter is that this book is only 9 sentences long! That's a short book, even by children's standards, despite the story being told more with pictures than words.

These come through in such books as 1981's Outside Over There, 1970's In the Night Kitchen, and, in the case of this review, 1963's Where the Wild Things Are. He didn't pander or sugarcoat his stories simply because he didn't feel a need (as well as a rather unpleasant childhood that introduced him to mortality in a less gentle light than most kids, but that's another story). The stories he wrote are very much like Grimm's Fairy Tales: whimsical and fun, but still dark and threatening. Maurice Sendak, who recently passed away, was one of the most controversial yet still imaginative authors to ever have been published.

Read where the wild things are