saw: where the wild things are
Director Spike Jonze knows how to work the sides but not the middle: What starts out being a movie I would have very much liked to see—a series of crisp episodes illustrating the immediate and ordinary dangers of being a little boy, rendered with the utmost warmth and delicacy—quickly detours to a visually monotonous desert island, where the production becomes mired in boogers and birth imagery. The titular wild things are, unfortunately, not so much manifestations of a child's id as they are feral mental cases who shuffle around in a lithium torpor, neither bathed nor bidden, occasionally erupting into bum fights before retreating to their private torments. The bulk of the film is a bipolar mess of tedious silence and manic violence, until the boy finally returns home and polishes off a giant hunk of cake in front of his mother, who falls asleep from boredom. Roll credits, audible sigh from studio. Grade: C-