I’ll Eat You Up!

Yes­ter­day my fam­ily saw Where The Wild Things Are.  I’d been look­ing for­ward to this for months in advance, but as the date drew closer, I found myself appre­hen­sive.  What if they ruined one of the sim­plest, best books from my youth?  Could I stand it?  Peo­ple were buzzing about it, which made me more ner­vous.  I was sur­prised that many peo­ple were inter­ested.  When I heard some­one express bore­dom with the whole con­cept, it made me feel much bet­ter, actu­ally.  I can’t explain that.  Then there was the pre­miere, and all talk seemed to drop off.  All I heard was Zom­bieland talk.  It was bizarre, because I knew so many peo­ple who claimed to be going the day of, but no one could tell me how the movie actu­ally was.

I went look­ing up reviews, know­ing that I couldn’t spoil the movie, hav­ing read the book.  I read scathing reviews mixed in with awestruck reviews.  Peo­ple sug­gested this was a big “ad for Ritalin” or a scarefest that would trau­ma­tize chil­dren.  I actu­ally read one reviewer who said it was unfair of Spike Jonze to inflict his own tor­tured, dark views of child­hood on her pre­cious cherubs.  I also read a lot of reviews that said it was bor­ing, and there wasn’t much plot.  So, I was a lit­tle con­cerned that it would be overly dark.  I wasn’t con­cerned about the plot, since it’s a 10 sen­tence book.  I didn’t expect a very com­plex, involved plot.  I expected the same as the book.  Kid throws tantrum, escapes to his imag­i­nary world, comes down off his tantrum, and returns home, where he finds uncon­di­tional love.

After see­ing the movie, which held pretty true to that for­mula, I find myself bog­gling at the reac­tions I read. The most com­mon charges were that the movie was too scary, or sym­bol­i­cally com­plex  for chil­dren to sit through.  Ha.  My kids, 8 and 5, loved it.  The lit­tle one was scared on the way to the the­atre because he’d over­heard me dis­cussing the dark reviews I’d read.  Sev­eral peo­ple sug­gested that any­one who iden­ti­fied with this movie, adult or child, should get to a coun­sel­lor or swal­low some happy pills straight­away. Well, child­hood is not all gummy bears and rain­bows!  Life is hard some­times.  To pre­tend oth­er­wise is unfair to chil­dren.  Yes, there are devel­op­men­tal stages wherein their under­stand­ing of life’s com­plex­i­ties are incom­plete, but we could say that of any adult as well.

I also read com­plaints that we didn’t know the “back­story” of some of the Wild Things.  Guess what?  This is a story about crit­ters from a boy’s imag­i­na­tion.  Go with that!  Chil­dren often are baf­fled by other people’s behav­ior.  They DON’T know the back­story as to why the peo­ple in their lives act the way they do.  It’s frus­trat­ing to not under­stand, or not to be able to express your­self prop­erly.  Kids have tantrums, freak out, get out of con­trol, act like wild things!  I think the movie cap­tured that very well.  Max was no mon­ster, despite what review­ers said.

The last com­plaint I read a lot of was that the movie was bor­ing, and only a “hip­ster” (I read this sev­eral times) would enjoy it.  I don’t even under­stand that com­plaint, to be hon­est.  I sup­pose it’s the most hon­est of all the reac­tions, though, because that boils down to an actual pref­er­ence, instead of a mis­guided attempt to shel­ter chil­dren from evil feel­ings like anger and sad­ness!  The bor­ing, I can attribute to the lack of song and dance raz­zle daz­zle that Pixar and Dis­ney have con­di­tioned us to expect from a kid’s story.  Jim Hen­son style pup­pets (which were super­cool, by the way), even with updated ani­ma­tions, are inad­e­quate in a world where every movie is a pri­mary col­ored 3D ani­ma­tion fest.  I found the movie to be styl­is­ti­cally beau­ti­ful and refresh­ing, personally.