Think back to a time long ago. A time when you were nine years old. Spike Jonze’s wonderfully made Where The Wild Things Are takes you back to your childhood with cleverly crafted scenes of the main character Max being a rambunctious child. Max is played by newcomer Max Records, a surprisingly impressive child actor who conveys the most real emotions you’ve ever seen on anyone’s face.

        Jonze does a great job with the movie as well, though he has been in the business much longer than Records. Jonze is credited with directing three actors including Meryl Streep, Nicholas Cage and Chris Cooper in Adaptation and several music videos for such artists as Weezer, R.E.M., and the Beastie Boys. He also got together with author of the classic book Where the Wild Things Are Maurice Sendak frequently in order to morph the book and movie successfully.

            Since it’s based on a nine page children’s book, the cast for Wild Things is very small, and more than half of it is made up of actors in monster costumes. That’s right—monster costumes. Never a fan of CG, Jonze made the decision that instead of having fully computer-generated Wild Things, the people doing voice-overs would walk around in huge puppet-like suits and would only have digitally enhanced facial features. Having costumed actors made a big impact on the film, and made it as realistic as a movie based on fictional creatures could be.

            The movie starts with Max in a wolf costume chasing a dog around his house until he finally tackles it. The next few scenes bring the audience into Max’s life as the troublesome younger sibling (his sister Claire is played by Pepita Emmerichs). Max’s mother (Catherine Keener) is a divorced, struggling writer, and though she is a minor character, Keener puts on a marvelous performance and makes a great supporting actress to Records.

            Following a scene where Max argues with his mother and ends up biting her, Max runs out of his house and into a forest where he discovers a small boat, which he uses to sail across a vast ocean until he reaches an island containing the Wild Things. The seven Wild Things- Carol, Ira, Judith, The Bull, Douglas, Alexander, and KW-meet Max and promptly dub him their king, mostly because Max tells them of magical powers that make him capable of exploding heads.

         What’s interesting about the monsters is how they vary from being very mature to incredibly childish. One moment they appear much wiser and more logical than Max, and the next they are consistently whining and throwing fits, expecting Max to act as a parent to them. Max retorts to this with more childlike actions. Other than this fluctuating behavior, the Wild Things have their own complex personalities—for example, Carol (James Gandolfini) is a parallel character to Max in a sense that he throws fits when he doesn’t get his way and is quick to act on an angry impulse to destroy things. Judith (Catherine O’Hara) and Ira (Forest Whitaker) are in love, which would be cute if Judith wasn’t so dominating and Ira was less of a pushover. Douglas (Chris Cooper), Carol’s right-hand man can’t think for himself, and The Bull (Michael Berry Jr.), the most mature of them all is a brooding giant who speaks his first and only line near the end of the film. Carol’s love interest, KW (Lauren Ambrose) frequently flees from their spherical houses to the opposite side of the island to meet with her huge owl friends Bob and Terry. Lastly, there is Alexander (Paul Dano), the smallest Wild Thing who is ignored by everyone in spite of his surprising wisdom.

            Yet with all of these wonderful characters and effects, Wild Things fails to sustain the charm that as children we all loved in the book. Though it was a terrific movie by itself, Wild Things is more of a thinking movie than an action-packed flick that most kids look for nowadays. For older viewers, the film is an amazing philosophical and nostalgic ride through a child’s mind, but kids will get bored with it after the first half of the movie and will be wishing they had gone to see Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs instead. This fantastic cast, the parallel stories between reality and Max’s imagination and the wild soundtrack (by Karen O and the Kids, Carter Burwell and Arcade Fire) creates a haunting and absolutely stunning movie that is a guaranteed favorite for many viewers.