Where the Wild Things Should Not Be...

…In the hands of Mr. Jonze, apparently. One would suspect that Maurice Sendak’s beloved picture book “Where the Wild Things Are,” with its simple and hauntingly visceral tale of childhood loneliness rescued by otherworldly beasts, could have secured no better director to bring its cuddly and complex characters to the big screen, yet somehow the notable talents of cinematic surrealist Spike Jonze, who, prior to his debut feature film Being John Malkovich (1999), worked strictly in the short forms of music videos and broadcast commercials, rendered a movie so painfully flat that audiences leaving the theater remarked more on the costumes than the film’s story or emotional affect.

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