Friday, Oct. 16, 2009

'Wild Things' adaptation stretches story too far

By Gary Wolcott, special to the Herald

Max Records is an angry young boy. The kid throws a snit, screams at his mother, runs away from home, steals a sailboat and takes it across the ocean to an island. There he finds huge, furry creatures and one that looks like a large chicken. He is made their king and leads them to -- yawn -- adventures like building a gigantic fort and having a dirt clod fight. Max isn't much of a king and becomes a king-sized disappointment to his new subjects.

Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) directs and though is film is beautifully shot, he can't give Sendak's creatures the personality they need. That's the crux of the problem of turning children's books into movies. Making 48 pages and a nine-sentence book like Where the Wild Things Are into a 110-minute movie requires too much fill. Nine sentences is too few for screenwriter Dave Eggers' less-than-wild imagination. You don't connect with Eggers' two-dimensional characters. You don't understand them. And after an hour, you -- and the kids you dragged to this disaster -- won't care.

Gene Deitch's seven-minute animated version in 1973 is too short but is much closer to a length that works for this story. Even the idea behind the opera version of the 1963 book makes more sense than turning it into a live-action movie.

I'm no doubt treading on sacred ground. Any criticism will be viewed as sacrilege but as proof, the opera tanked, the short subject went largely unnoticed and Jonze version is made for adults and will bore kids to tears.

Law Abiding Citizen

Vicious thugs break into Clyde Shelton's home and rape and kill his wife and child. District attorney Nick Rice is more concerned with his conviction ratio than justice and cuts a deal. The baddest of the perpetrators does 10 years in the slammer in exchange for testimony against his co-conspirator.

Ten years later a righteously angry Shelton kills the two killers and begins a life and death cat and mouse game with Rice. Turns out that Shelton is a trained killing machine.

Revenge has never been so bland. Though much of the fault for the failure of Law Abiding Citizen lands is at the feet of its two stars, Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, once the set-up is in place, the story has nowhere to go that you haven't already been dozens of times.

Director F. Gary Gray -- best known for the comedy Friday -- and writer Kurt Wimmer (The Recruit) need to see more chop and slash flicks like the new horror chain, Saw, or some of the oldie but goodies like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. Nothing Shelton does to Rice and his cohorts is remotely original. Halfway through you are bored and stay that way until the admittedly somewhat original ending.

It's too bad the ending didn't come an hour earlier.

My Sweet Misery

My Sweet Misery has unknown actors -- except for Anna Chlumsky of the early '90s flick My Girl -- and is done by first-time writer/director and editor Matthew William Jordan. Outside of Star Trek and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, it may be the most fun you'll have in a theater all year.

No heavy analysis, or in-depth critiquing. My Sweet Misery takes the well-worn premise of a marriage break-up to brand new places via an interestting spin on dialogue and some inventive cinematography.

Zach Hanks' Sam checks into a motel to commit suicide. His rambling note as to why is written on a roll of toilet paper. Rescued by his near-psychopathic brother, Sam works his way toward personal redemption with help from an imaginary psychiatrist, the brother, friends that live at a Cheers-like bar and the motel's maid who responds to his whining with her on message -- on the same toilet paper roll.

Jordan is a talented writer and director who proves that you don't need big stars and a multimillion-dollar payroll to make a great movie. His film is the best of this week's openings. And you can't beat that Carmike Cinemas only charges $5 to see each movie in its annual independent series.

◗ Go to Mr. Movie's blog at tricityherald.com/arts/mrmovie.