G-Headon

I was really hoping to enjoy this movie and for the first hour, I did. Unfortunately where the wild things are is where character development is not. The main character, Max, remains just as selfish and cruel at the beginning of the movie as he is at the end. The society of the wild things is in just as much disarray when they are first introduced as when Max leaves them. There is no moral in this movie, no theme, no substance; just a lot of really good looking cinematography and well designed monsters but that alone can't make a movie. It needs to have a point to its existence, a message it's trying to convey and for the life of me I couldn't find one, all I could see was how horribly mean children can be. At the beginning of the movie Max is excluded by his sister and later on he does the same thing to a few of the wild things so there was ample opportunity to show him learning something about responsibility, respect, and self control yet when he returns from his adventure there is no apology to his mother or sister, just complete forgiveness towards him for all the bad things he did earlier in the day and the reward of chocolate cake. It reminded me of Coraline and how she learned absolutely nothing from her encounter with the "other world." It must be a trend in kids movies these days to have the child be right about everything and be completely forgiven for any wrongdoings on their part just because they return after they've run away. So what did I learn from this movie? If I find myself craving cake I should go around biting people and treating them badly because that seems to be the way the world works.