Where the Wild Things Are

Rating: 6.5/10

Genre: Fantasy

Overall value for money and time: 6.0/10

Fantasy: 1/5

CG effects: 1/5

Soundtrack: 4/5

Story: 2.5/5

One of the few movies with great soundtracks, songs which seem to be able to touch that soft place in your heart... I was extremely disappointed when I learnt that this movie would not be screened in our local cinemas, recalling someone telling me about what was written in the newspapers that this movie would not be well received by the local audience.

So when it first came out on dvd, I bought it at what was possibly the highest cost for a code 3 DVD. The only other dvd which shared the same privilege as this was Ong Bak 2; even though they'll selling Ong Bak 2 very cheap nowadays. Well, I didn't regret buying the dvd, but it'll probably be my one and only time viewing it. There was nothing fantastic about this movie.

Where the wild things are, a supposed child fantasy movie about a little boy who ran away from home and landed up on an island inhabitated by big and cute furry creatures. The poster features the main creature, but and it seems... *spoilers ahead* looks can be deceiving. Not just the poster, but the creature itself.

What I didn't like about this movie was that it didn't reach up to my expectations of what a fantasy movie should turn out... in fact, it felt more like a real life situation where the creatures looked extremely life-like... almost felt like humans dressed in mascot suits. The details of the facial features were convincing but part from that, everything about the creatures felt... off. I liked how the "fantasy" world was a subtle representation of the male protagonist's world, but it wasn't enough to boost this movie into my top rankings for fantasy movies.

If you're thinking something like Harry Potter or even Spiderwick Chornicles, this movie will disappoint. Because there's nothing fantasy about it, the island which the creatures inhabitated was just like any other Survivor series' islands and the male protagonist didn't have a likeable personality. One of the reasons why I think Singapore didn't let this movie be shown on the big screens is because of some of the qualities portrayed... this movie felt like it was ok for kids to run away from home to discover themselves before coming back to appreciate what "home" really was...

Still, the moral of the story wasn't that bad, the ending scene was one of the sweetest, but rather subtle and left a fairly feel-good feeling when the credits rolled. The special features helped me to appreciate the movie slightly better, the technical difficulties in filming a short scene at the start of the movie with a dog running and barking at the same time and how the children around the entire crew were given that much freedom to "direct" and play in the sets to create that added feel in a children's fantasy world (though it didn't quite show in the movie). But most important, the kids had fun, the director and crew had fun, and I had... a pretty good time watching this movie.