The biggest problem with strong>Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, in the view of Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, “is not the look of the costumed creatures but the manner in which they speak.

There are fine creative inventions in the film, he adds, “but nothing much is ever at stake, causing a story that begins in dynamic fashion to slowly devolve to the level of fleeting whimsy.”

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Things is “fleet of foot, emotionally attuned to its subject and instinctively faithful to its celebrated source, and it earns a lot of points for its hand-crafted look and unhomogenized, dare-one-say organic rendering of unrestrained youthful imagination. But Jonze’s sharp instincts and vibrant visual style can’t quite compensate for the lack of narrative eventfulness that increasingly bogs down this bright-minded picture.”