I think that fidelity to the source material is fairly thin praise considering that the film represents a profound expansion and transformation of Sendak’s book. It’s informative to consider the ways in which the film’s story *differs* from the book’s story (such as it is). In the book, Max is younger–perhaps six?–and the only really awful thing he does is chase the dog with a fork. His fantasy plays out entirely in his room, to which he’s been sent for the crime of shouting at his mother, “I’ll eat you up!”

In Jonze’s film, we see a bit more of Max’s bad behavior, and it’s fairly unacceptable, especially given that he is older (nine?) than in the book: trashing his sister’s room out of spite, including destroying a memento *he* gave her, standing on the kitchen counter in defiance, and physically hitting and biting (!) his mother. That’s pretty bad. And he’s not sent to his room; he actually runs away. And then at the end of film, we don’t get even a whisper of contrition from him. It’s very odd and uncomfortable. I can only assume that Jonze didn’t make these changes on a whim, and that he considers them an improvement for what he is trying to do. I don’t find the result attractive, at least from a moral perspective.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I had children of my own. None of this is to deny that Max is a troubled, lonely, confused kid who acts out. He obviously is, and I think, contra naysayers who are denigrating Wild Things as the work of a miserable artist looking back on his own childhood, I think he *gets* the particular feeling of what it was like to be a kid (especially one at Max’s age in the film.) But I think that Glenn Kenny is right when he pegs the film as “privleging” of male childhood. The film seems to be saying that Max doesn’t owe anyone any apologies or amends, and (at best) whatever lessons he has learned are purely internal emotional shifts whose results play out after the credits roll. The best defense of the final scene I’ve read characterized Max’s little grin as him recognizing how hard his mother’s job of raising him is, an empathy that he learned by mothering the Wild Things.

Strangely enough, I don’t think is a film for children, especially younger children. It feels as though you need to be an adult looking backwards to appreciate it.