Ages 8 and Up - Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers' adaptation takes Sendak's rather simple story and expands it to an emotional and visually stunning film. Max is given a back story which includes a single-parent household, a neglectful older sister, and something of a lonely life. When he acts up and tells his mother 'I'm going to eat you up!' he is not sent to his room without dinner, but runs away, with his confused and terrified mother running after him. That's when Max finds a boat and sails off to where the wild things are.
All the wild things from the picture book are here, looking, with the help of CGI and Hensen puppetry, remarkably like Sendak's original drawings. Perhaps representing different facets of Max, the wild things are given names, personalities, relationships, fears, and complicated human problems. Somewhat heavy dialog is mixed with action-packed play and some scary moments (you can never completely trust the wild things). An overall sad yet hopeful film, the message that comes across is the importance and imperfection of home and the scariness of love. A little deep, even boring, for young viewers, the primary audience for the this movie is adults. Recommended for public library film collections. ( )

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers widely expanded on the story by Sendak, with glimpses into Max's personal life and parallels between it and the land of The Wild Things. Most appropriate for early elementary and above, children will adore the monsters and their idiosyncracies, the mud fights, intricate forts, and sleeping in a pile. An utterly gorgeous and heartfelt movie. I would include it in my collection. ( )

Max wants everyone to listen to him, so he runs away one night to find somewhere that suits him.
This is a beautiful movie. It echoes the book while fleshing it out into something that almost feels too short. Most importantly, the Wild Things look just like the ones in the book. The creatures are perfect, and it was a very wise choice to combine puppets with CGI. Just goes to show that no one does monsters like the Henson Company. The only question is whether younger children will "get" it. The whole movie feels like a love letter to the adults who grew up with the book.
It's a little scary at times, but most kids could handle it. ( )

This book was a real let down for me, I thought that The Wild Things was going to be great. The first 100 pages are really good it is about Max's life with his family and how his family life is falling apart. So as you can guess he gets in a boat and goes to the island where the wild things are. This is where the story goes boring..... I don't know, read it tell me how I am wrong.... I thought this book would be more. ( )