Saw the new Spike Jonz movie that’s got the critics and hipsters so delirious. Hated it. It’s difficult to know where to begin. Well, let’s start with how completely unaffecting it is. The little protagonist, Max, is an infantile, narcissistic, Hitler-wannabe with a Napoleon complex. Oh, and he’s got serious impulse control problems. He’d like to rule the world and destroy it at the same time. Very profound. Frustrated that he can’t impose his will on his world — especially his big sister, with whom he’s got some serious issues — he wrecks her room, bites his mother, and runs away. Mom gives chase for a couple blocks, but, in the wisest moment in the film, gives up and goes back home. If you had to live with Max, you’d wouldn’t try that hard to get him back, either. The little monster then sails off to an island where he meets other monsters: infantile incarnations of various infantile parts of himself. Yeah, really deep. Then, the movie gets completely boring. Of course, in fairness, the movie was boring from the beginning. In fact, in the beginning, I found myself thinking “Well, it will be good when Max meets the wild things.” Then, when he met the wild things, became their king, and announced a “rumpus,” I found myself thinking, “Well, it will be good when something profound happens.” Then, as the scenes on the island went on and on and on, I found myself thinking, “Well, it will be good when he gets back home and shows some growth.” Finally, when that didn’t pan out either, I found myself thinking, “Well, it will be good when we get to leave.” We’d have walked out half way through, but our escape routes on either side of our row were blocked by other victims . . . I mean audience members. So we had to stay to the bitter, sucky, learned-nothing, still-a-psychopathic-little-brat end. Like “Lost in Translation” — another much-buzz film that left us cold and wishing for a rope to drop from the ceiling and haul our asses out of the theater — this movie had us wondering, “Why did so many critics go agog over this silly half-assed, plotless piece of crap?”
So if you hated this movie, and don’t understand what the buzz is about, you’re not alone. And don’t let anyone start lecturing you about the brilliant Freudian symbolic economy of the movie, and its “subtle” use of foreshadowing, its stunning visual appeal (Not!), or whatever other crap its defenders will come up with. Just smile and tell them the truth: The movie is overblown and flacid, and as subtle as a trainwreck.
And then make sure to lock your bedroom door, because they’ll try to wreck your room.