So right from the get go we're introduced to Max and he's relatively crap life. His tween/teenage sister is starting to ignore him for DRUGS AND PENIS so he feels distance and no longer has a real constant person to play make believe with. His mum is too busy for him most of the time either with work or flirting it up with his new replacement daddy. So he's getting all pissy and as a little kid he doesn't know exactly how to vent his rage and sadness. So naturally he throws a temper tantrum and runs away due to his emotions collapsing inward on him.
At this point he runs off to a forest, finds a boat and embarks on a journey to where the Wild Things live.
Here's where some spoilers might come into play.
So it's fairly obvious that these monsters represent the various emotions of a child. Carol is the rage and confusion, Judith is the pessimistic second guessing nature, Douglas is the intelligent logic, Alexander is always trying to get attention and be popular and so on and so forth. Anyway, when I first saw this movie I was a bit confused about if this was real or not. Max isn't particularly scared or even a bit concerned about the fact that GIANT FUCKING MONSTERS are hanging out on some far off island.
So I got to thinking and realized something. Those few seconds of him yelling in the forest is the entire movie. These monsters can't possibly exist, and a child couldn't go this long without food and there's no way he could survive a sea voyage to a far away monster island.
How the fuck does he ends up kicking it with all of these monsters? It's all just an internal battle. Everything that happens on the island is him internally dealing with all the problems he's been facing. Such as his teacher telling him everything in the universe is going to die, the snowball fight and how it went from a great deal of fun to a big ol' heap of not fun in a few seconds, everyone being too busy for him and being caught doing something he's not supposed to be doing.
As a kid he hasn't really built up the ability to deal with all of these problems in the real world, so as they all grew inside of him they eventually needed to be released leading up to his emotional outburst towards him mum at dinner. When he claims "IT'S NOT MY FAULT!" it really isn't. He's just dealing with so many different things and he has no idea what they are or how to deal with them.
So anyway, the whole finding a boat and leaving is all just in his head and really is the core narrative, but that whole scene takes place in the few seconds of him screaming into the sky when he's at his most vulnerable. This is him dealing with everything finally. This is where he faces all the problems I mentioned above and tackles them in a way he can understand and cope with, as a king of fantastical creatures.
At the end he says goodbye to all the various creatures. This symbolizes him saying goodbye to all those chaotic emotions, at least for now, and his overcoming of the various problems presented to him throughout the movie. This is incredibly fucking brilliant. When Carol comes running up to apologize, the most chaotic and arguably most Max like monster Max smiles, sealing the deal of both understanding and completion. At this point he's finally come to peace with all the inner demons he's been dealing with in this film. At which point he finally calms down enough to come back to reality, at which point he realizes what happened.
The stress of the fight between Max and his mum made her send her new boyfran home and she's waiting for Max to come home, or waiting to call the police. Obviously he comes home first all to make up for his inability to cope with childhood stress.
This movie is fucking brilliant and it deals with childlike mindset and coping mechanisms perfectly.
And of course this is just my interpretation of the events of the movie. You can have different (read: wrong) interpretations as well.
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