Why is everyone in “Where the Wild Things Are” so insanely depressed?
 A 100-minute riff on Maurice Sendak’s 336-word children’s book, the film introduces us to the sullen, unruly Max (Max Records), who acts out after his sister’s friends destroy his snow fort and his single mother (Catherine Keener) dares to have a man (Mark Ruffalo) over for dinner.
 Fleeing from his home, Max journeys to a magical land populated by large, furry, bizarrely passive-aggressive creatures searching for a king who will help them keep away the loneliness and sadness. The matter of why these creatures are so miserable — they’re alternately struggling with anger-management issues, low self-esteem and megalomania — is never addressed.
 What it is not, even by the most creative of estimations, is a movie for kids. Photographed by the gifted Lance Acord (“Marie Antoinette”) mostly on the coast of Australia, with an anxious, handheld camera and natural light streaming across the frame, “Where the Wild Things Are” deliberately eschews anything warm, fuzzy or comforting. When Max meets the creatures, late into the night, they leer into the camera and debate about whether they should eat this little boy.
 They don’t eat him (we could only be so lucky that the movie would be over so soon). Instead, “Where the Wild Things Are” follows Max as he develops friendships with Carol 
(voiced by James Gandolfini), who expresses his anger by smashing things up, and KW (Lauren Ambrose), who feels no connection to the clan and keeps drifting away to spend time with a pair of owls.
 I get the idea that all these creatures — along with the meek, goatlike figure Alexander (Paul Dano) and the conniving, unicorn-looking Judith (Catherine O’Hara) — are extensions of Max’s own personality. But that doesn’t mean you would want to spend any time with them, certainly not considering that most of the “plot” consists of these figures chatting and wandering aimlessly.
 “Where the Wild Things Are” is certainly impressive to stare at. But by the time Max climbs inside KW’s mouth to escape the hungry jaws of Carol, and then emerges cold, wet and goo-covered, “Where the Wild Things Are” seems determined to claim a dubious honor: the Most Depressing Children’s Movie Ever Made.