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.
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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.”
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