Yearning for escape and adventure, a young boy runs away from home and sails to an island filled with creatures that take him in as their king.Yearning for escape and adventure, a young boy runs away from home and sails to an island filled with creatures that take him in as their king.Yearning for escape and adventure, a young boy runs away from home and sails to an island filled with creatures that take him in as their king.
- Awards
- 7 wins & 54 nominations
Catherine O'Hara
- Judith
- (voice)
Forest Whitaker
- Ira
- (voice)
James Gandolfini
- Carol
- (voice)
Michael Berry Jr.
- The Bull
- (voice)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn July 2006, less than six weeks before the start of shooting, the Henson-built monster suits arrived at the Melbourne soundstage where Spike Jonze and his crew had set up their offices. The actors climbed inside and began moving around. Right away, Jonze could see that the heads were absurdly heavy. Only one of the cast members appeared to be able to walk in a straight line. A few of them called out from within their costumes that they felt like they were going to tip over. Jonze and the production crew had no choice, but to tell the Henson people to tear apart the fifty-pound heads, and remove the remote-controlled mechanical eyeballs. This meant that all the facial expressions would have to be generated in post-production, using computers.
- GoofsWhen Max says, "Wow!" when he sees Carol's world built from sticks, an earpiece is visible in Max Records' ear.
- Quotes
[last lines]
The Bull: Hey, Max?
Max: Yeah?
The Bull: When you go home, will you say good things about us?
Max: Yeah, I will.
The Bull: Thanks, Max.
Judith: You're the first king we haven't eaten.
Alexander: Yeah, that's true.
Judith: See ya.
Alexander: Bye, Max.
Max: Bye.
KW: Don't go. I'll eat you up; I love you so.
[all howl]
- Crazy creditsThe logos for Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, and Village Roadshow Pictures are covered with Max's scribblings.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Rotten Tomatoes Show: Duplicity/Knowing/I Love You, Man (2009)
- SoundtracksWorried Shoes
Written by Daniel Johnston
Produced by Karen O and Tom Biller (as tbiller)
Performed by Karen O and the Kids
Courtesy of DGC/Interscope Records
Featured review
This is a huge success, and I believe that it will reach that status now called "classic," being experienced over and over in whatever ways that classics will in the future.
I'll let others note the purity in the way that sharp childhood is evoked. It is the emotional center of the thing. I'll be more interested here in noting the cinematic use of space. Jonze is famous for this, and how he can connect it to the folds in the narrative.
"Folds" in this context have to do with nesting of narrative elements. For instance the "real world" segments feature eating (twice), fort (twice), snowball fight, wild suit, pileon, pulling at toes, lost marriage, broken model of a heart, being king, son/sun dying and so on. The "wild world" features the same things twisted in ways that suggest the real narrative describing the inner character of Max. This "folding" gives us a place to stand and engages us more deeply, as a key narrative device. There is even a smaller inner fold where Carol (the Max surrogate) makes a model of his world, hidden in the desert. And another where Max enters KW.
I am more interested in the spatial folding. Yup, the way that Jonze has decided to set up and elaborate a vocabulary of movement.
Here's what we have, I think. I have only seen this once and will have to wait for DVD study to confirm it.
The scenes I am working with here are the ones with physical motion, where both the camera and the subjects move: the dogchasing, snowball fight, the amazing encounter with the waves when approaching the island, the rumpus and then the dirtball fight. Frozen motionpaths are in the fort's appendage, the "pile," and indicated by the stickweaving in the global fort and houses.
I believe these all use the same motion template. When someone invents a movie annotation tool where we can find and describe this, it will be easy to check and show. Right now it is an impression, but I got the feeling when watching that wave scene (in IMAX) that I would see the same motion paths in the forthcoming rumpus. Perhaps it was the appearance of the ululating sound that was used every time something got frantic, and by that time twice already. Perhaps it was the obvious reference to the Hokusai woodblock ("The Great Wave off Kanagawa"), where a wild wave becomes an actor, a wild thing dwarfing an iconic mountain, whose shape I thought I also saw on-screen.
I would not be surprised either if Spike used a sigla to denote this motion (like Joyce does in "Finnegans Wake") and that the sigla was KW, denoting the actual paths, the K in plan and the W in the vertical plane. Thus, KW swallowing/eating Max, apart from the obvious vaginal association also takes on a deeply cinematic one, worthy of "Adaptation." I know the work on this was done in Melbourne. Could it be that this apparent one-man shop "Digital Rein" managed this? In an unconnected area, am I misremembering? I recall the phrase was "Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!" (not "start").
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
I'll let others note the purity in the way that sharp childhood is evoked. It is the emotional center of the thing. I'll be more interested here in noting the cinematic use of space. Jonze is famous for this, and how he can connect it to the folds in the narrative.
"Folds" in this context have to do with nesting of narrative elements. For instance the "real world" segments feature eating (twice), fort (twice), snowball fight, wild suit, pileon, pulling at toes, lost marriage, broken model of a heart, being king, son/sun dying and so on. The "wild world" features the same things twisted in ways that suggest the real narrative describing the inner character of Max. This "folding" gives us a place to stand and engages us more deeply, as a key narrative device. There is even a smaller inner fold where Carol (the Max surrogate) makes a model of his world, hidden in the desert. And another where Max enters KW.
I am more interested in the spatial folding. Yup, the way that Jonze has decided to set up and elaborate a vocabulary of movement.
Here's what we have, I think. I have only seen this once and will have to wait for DVD study to confirm it.
The scenes I am working with here are the ones with physical motion, where both the camera and the subjects move: the dogchasing, snowball fight, the amazing encounter with the waves when approaching the island, the rumpus and then the dirtball fight. Frozen motionpaths are in the fort's appendage, the "pile," and indicated by the stickweaving in the global fort and houses.
I believe these all use the same motion template. When someone invents a movie annotation tool where we can find and describe this, it will be easy to check and show. Right now it is an impression, but I got the feeling when watching that wave scene (in IMAX) that I would see the same motion paths in the forthcoming rumpus. Perhaps it was the appearance of the ululating sound that was used every time something got frantic, and by that time twice already. Perhaps it was the obvious reference to the Hokusai woodblock ("The Great Wave off Kanagawa"), where a wild wave becomes an actor, a wild thing dwarfing an iconic mountain, whose shape I thought I also saw on-screen.
I would not be surprised either if Spike used a sigla to denote this motion (like Joyce does in "Finnegans Wake") and that the sigla was KW, denoting the actual paths, the K in plan and the W in the vertical plane. Thus, KW swallowing/eating Max, apart from the obvious vaginal association also takes on a deeply cinematic one, worthy of "Adaptation." I know the work on this was done in Melbourne. Could it be that this apparent one-man shop "Digital Rein" managed this? In an unconnected area, am I misremembering? I recall the phrase was "Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!" (not "start").
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Donde viven los monstruos
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $100,000,000 (estimated)
- Gross US & Canada
- $77,233,467
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $32,695,407
- Oct 18, 2009
- Gross worldwide
- $100,140,916
- Runtime1 hour 41 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.39 : 1
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