A very realistic live-action little boy, acting out at suppertime and running away from home in a Halloween animal costume, sails across the sea to an all-brown imaginary land of giant hirsute Muppets, where he confronts hard truths about his own irrationality and impracticality. Spike Jonze's free-hand adaptation of the sketchy Maurice Sendak children's picture book is aimed more at the knowing adult than at the tot, but even the knowing may gag on urpy imagery that, for all its painstaking detail and unstinting production, continually recalls such indigestibles as The Neverending Story and Labyrinth. With Max Records, Catherine Keener, and the voices of James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Dano, and Forest Whitaker. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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