Just saw it with my wife, my 13 year old son and my 9 year old daughter (who spent about the last 30 minutes of the movie in tears). It’s visually was very nice, but emotionally is quite dark and disturbing.
Like the book Max goes off to the land of the Wild Things (and daughter was disappointed that he physically runs away rather than having his bedroom transform like the book). They declare him king and he says “Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!”. The rest of the story is made up out of whole cloth. The Wild Things are a big dysfunctional family physically and verbally abuse each other. They expect Max to resolve all their problems, and then gradually turn against him when he can’t. It seemed to be based as much on “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe” as “Where the Wild Things are.” There’s even a depressing bit that’s lifted from the “The Glass Menagerie” - or in the case “The Stick Menagerie”.
The movie is not uninteresting, but it written more for adults who are bitter about unresolved childhood issues, than for actual children. And as is the fashion in Hollywood, there’s no moral resolution that maybe we could start to solve these problems by treating each other better, just the message that we should accept ourselves and each other for who we are.
Thank you very much for posting your review! Sometimes books are best left to the individual’s imagination rather than some producer’s interpretation.