Critic Reviews
71
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
23(62%)
mixed
14(38%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 37 Critic Reviews
100
This is one of the year's best. To paraphrase the Wild Thing named KW, I could eat it up, I love it so.
100
What he’s (Jonze) ended up with strikes me as one of the most empathic and psychologically acute of all movies about childhood -- a "Wizard of Oz" for the dysfunctional-family era.
100
Not since Robert Altman took on “Popeye” a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail.
100
Jonze has filmed a fantasy as if it were absolutely real, allowing us to see the world as Max sees it, full of beauty and terror. The brilliant songs, by Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the Kids, enhance the film's power.
100
As wish-fulfillments go, this is a movie lover's dream.
100
With Where the Wild Things Are Jonze has made a work of art that stands up to its source and, in some instances, surpasses it.
100
In elaborating on the original book so boldly, and repopulating it so richly, Jonze has protected Where the Wild Things Are as an inviolable literary work. In preserving its darkest spirit, he's created a potent, fully realized variation on its most highly charged themes.
100
His (Jonze) obvious affection for, and veneration of, Maurice Sendak's 1963 Caldecott Medal-winning children's book is palpable in his near-perfect live-action adaptation, a dreamy -- and, like Sendak's book, faintly nightmarish -- exploration of one child's tantrum-y side.
91
Spike Jonze has recently said in interviews that his chief goal ...was to try to capture the feeling of being 9. By that measure--by just about any measure, really--he succeeded wildly.
90
His film captures the wonderment of dreaming - and the reality of waking.
