This review will not take long. Darling wife and I took our three young children and a neighbor kid from across the street to a movie followed by Five Guys for burgers.
We saw Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze’s tragically flawed adaptation of the Maurice Sendak classic. Perhaps you like watching depressing movies about relationship problems between people who refuse, idiotic, to change. Then you might like this movie. Perhaps you like watching a movie with the message that your friends are waiting until you slip up, at which time they will eat you up, cannibal-like. Then you might like this movie. Perhaps you like movies that speak the unselfconscious symbolic language of children while carrying a lesson that relationships cannot last, that marriage ends in divorce and mutual alienation, that only relationships between simpletons like Ira and Judith can last, and that on a more basic level relationships are just a bummer. Then you might like this movie. Or perhaps, like me, you recognize the seductive beauty of the movie, and hate it for the psychic poison it delivers to the defenseless minds of kids.
We will not be buying it on DVD.
Did I mention that while rushing to the bathroom to pee, our 4 year old Sugarlump vomited her popcorn all the way down the carpeted hallway behind the theater? And that after cleaning up and returning to our seats she curled up in her daddy’s lap and went to sleep? That made the rest of the movie more bearable.
We finished the evening at Five Guys with the best burgers and fries the kids ever ate. That’s what they said. Evening saved.
Other reviews: NYT, Tech Banyan, Entertainment Weekly, HuffPo, NRO
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Technorati Tags: Spike Jonze, Where the Wild Things Are, Movie Review
Steve Maley
Moe Lane
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Expectation Fulfilled
michael_j_lambert (Diary) Saturday, October 17th at 2:14AM EST (link)I saw few, if any, previews, but my gut told me this movie would stink. It seems, based on your review, that the director, producer, and screenwriter missed what “Where the Wild Things Are” was. In short, it is an adaptation of the story of the prodigal son. Or perhaps it is simply cast from the same mold.
The message that should have come out of its journey to the big screen is that a mother’s love is constant, that home is the only place where you will always belong, and that there will always be a bowl of hot soup waiting beside your bed, no matter what circumstances were when you left.
that message was the last one in the movie
Beaglescout (Diary) Saturday, October 17th at 3:21AM EST (link)but by that time I was worn out by being bummed out.
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.”