Well, the producer actually did note that it's not a kids movie.

Watership Down, 'nuff said for stuff made for kids that 'maybe' they shouldn't go seeing.

LOL

"TWO WORDS...WATERSHIP DOWN"

Yeah, you know, I guess I watched that when I was little. Sure it was scary, but it didn't mess me up, or anything.

Oh really?

i kept waiting to get drawn into the story

there were a few clever moments but nothing to keep me interested throughout the whole movie

also kids who bite their moms should not get cake

Yeah come on, remember when he got sent to his room with no supper?

pretty much my sentiments exactly :/

Biting a mom hand is not a kids movie

lol

but its a good movie I hear c:

PSH I KNOW I HAVE READ THE BOK


I never would have imagined that they would make it into a movie. Kinda like CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS, but I heard that was pretty good.

I haven't seen it yet, but I wanna.

I saw Coraline in 3D, but I didn't really notice it for some reason. :o

The 3D!

oh I wish you had gone with chris and I! I think you were working. if you guys wanted to get Sam and his friend (and Chris could stand seeing it again) we should go out and see it. It was such a fun movie.
like non-artistic popcorn flick fun

Go and see what movie again? WtWTA? No thanks... I'll pass, heh.

lol no cloudy with a chance of tofuballs

I could see that movie again!

ah, yeah, I could dig that.

kid has some serious issues :c

also he went to an island and fucked it up more

left without saying anything consoling

got home and didn't apologize

got cake

?????

PROFIT!!!

ALL YOU ARE DOING IS ADDING POINTS TO MY JOURNAL, AND IT HAS A MILLION POINTS NOW

I think it's supposed to be that the island and the monsters are just parts of himself, and his perception of people around him...I dunno. And yeah was his mom like, wasted or something? I think she was drunk. :o

I suppose what gets me is that the kid didn't seem to really learn anything out of it. These monsters are bickering with one another and some are getting picked on; if it had registered in his mind that this was a parallel to his life in the 'real world', he didn't make it clear by standing up for them or trying to explain to them the problems behind it.

Except maybe destroying the houses in the beginning, but he was originally a violent kid anyways.

He learned that a family needs a parent to function. Hence why he went home.

lol, she was not drunk!!! She's no more drunk then you are when I call you a wino after a smirnoff. She had one glass of wine and no slurred speech. She was rational and calm talking to the kid even after he bit her.

THAT'S WHAT I SAID!!!

She's a single mom doing her best and that little bastard kid bit her. He should have been picking said teeth up off the floor and gumming his chocolate cake.

I thought it was a kid's movies too. than i found out it wasn't and was completely blown away

i really loved it, and i loved how ballsy it was

Agreed, except I knew it wasn't really a kids movie from the start.

I liked it a bit, but I must agree that it did drag on quite a bit.

Not to mention that I was rather perplexed by the fact that they took a kids book and created a movie that I can't see kids enjoying that much at all (in fact, the only people I hear talking up the movie are other adults; kids seemed to have been rather bored by it). It was fairly depressing/downing at points and the way things wrapped up was pretty disappointing overall (fucking everything up on the island, then just leaving? Getting away with being a total shithead to his mom/running away just because she seemed happy to have him home and too tired to really punish him at the time? WTF).

It was a good movie and I can definitely see how so many people are in love with it, but... it was lacking in more ways than one.

I feel as though it was definently geared more towards adults.

It was a little dark at times, but overall I really enjoyed it.

I'm a huge proponent of BALANCE in films.

Like this one was slightly off kilter because there wasn't enough "OMG it's so fun and magical to be a kid" moments to counter the inordinate amount of realizations about how tough life is.

But that's what this film is and often times when a flick isn't what you expect, the best thing for it is time. Let it sit and fester in your mind until you become comfortable with what it IS rather than what you expected/wanted. THEN watch it again and you'll probably be more accepting. There's a lot of films that were like that for me...

Yeah, I read that the director said it wasn't really a kids movie, and the studio directed 70% of marketing targeted towards adults and only 30% towards kids.

I actually really really liked the movie, but probably for exactly the same reason a lot of people didn't care for it: I sort of enjoyed the fact that the movie didn't really have a plot or story in any traditional sense. It seemed more like the movie, and the entire island of the Wild Things, was more of an open-ended exploration of Max's personality and mind. So there was no particular villain or demon to vanquish, no object to recover or princess to save or lesson to learn. Just a broad statement: This is Max.

I think what fascinated me was the way, with both Max and the monsters, the movie helped recapture what it was like to be a kid. Not that any point of my life was particularly that dark or screwed up, but just the way thoughts flit almost randomly from subject to subject, and mood can swing from one extreme to the other at the drop of a hat, and everything seems huge and monumental and grand and scary. I enjoyed being reminded of what that was like.

Pretty much my take on it as well ^_^

I think it consciously bucks the idea of the concrete, linear plot with a traditional Hollywood path from conflict to resolution in favor of showing us that child-like headspace. It's meandering because that's the way kids' minds work. It doesn't have a concrete moral because kids don't often arrive at fully realized morals by way of epiphany.

To folks who felt Max didn't mature at all over the course of the movie, I would disagree. I think the whole arc of the film is Max learning empathy for others. I think there's support for that in his interactions with Alexander (the goat). All of the monsters are projections of some part of Max's personality (or projections of family members and the other folks in his life), and I think his eventual ability to empathize with Alexander instead of antagonizing him shows a growing ability to recognize what it feels like to be ignored or picked on. Learning to understand that other people have feelings the same as we do is a core part of developing empathy as a child. Similarly, Max's transition from playing willing sidekick to Carol (Max's destructive, wild side) to feeling hesitant or even afraid shows Max gaining objectivity there as well, and realizing that it's not such a good thing to be totally wild and impulsive.

It's true that all of this growth is purely internal to Max, so there's no reason why his mom should know that he's earned a reward, she's his mom. Parents worry when their children run off, and feel relieved when they come home. Sometimes they're also too easy on their kids. I don't think that a piece of chocolate cake is enough to get in my way of enjoying the movie or finding it a compelling, absorbing depiction of what it's like to be a wild child.

I full agree with all of the points above, and I truly feel that the movie has enhanced the book.

This is a very raw movie that contrasts and fleshes the book into characters that we attach to and care about.

I left caring about the world and wanting to be a part of it. It kept me imagining, and talking.

Well said. :)

To tell you the truth I never even thought of Max getting "rewarded" with the chocolate cake for learning a lesson or anything; I merely took it as what you said, his mother was relieved to see him after she thought he had run away or gone missing, and her instinct was to ... well, mother him. :)

Since I heard of this, I have been wondering how they expanded this fairly short book into a huuuuge film. I don't think I wanna see it, for I think it will ruin some element of the MAGICAL BOOK

Personally I'm pondering about seeing it. Not really decided whether I will at the theatre or not.

I HATED THAT BOOK WHEN I WAS A KID

I MEAN I'M NOT INDIE ENOUGH

I thought it was fantastic.

Just saw it two days ago. Really enjoyed it, but I wouldn't take a kid to go see it. It doesn't have enough conflict and a child would probably get bored. I thought it moved fast enough for me though. I felt it was Max facing the common child archetypes.

I really enjoyed it, and it was fucking beautiful to boot too.

As for not "solving" anything, I think it was more about Max coming to terms with himself. It was impossible to make the wild-things happy all the time, because that's just not how life works. Realizing that you can't be happy all the time, and making sacrifices for the happiness of other people is a huge part of growing up.

as far as the movie vs book argument the author maurice sendak actually said he thinks the movie is a expansion of his book and does nothing but add to the universe of it and is completely happy with the outcome, spike jonze is something like the 9th person who approached Mr sendak about the movie and was the only one who wasent shut down, so in essence the author has been waiting for the right director to show up

and the whole not a kid movie thing , the original book was initially banned in quite a lot of libraries for not being appropriate for children, and since it was released in 1963 the book has a huge age range in its fanbase i mean i read the book when i was kid and so did my friends in their late thirties and early forties

personally i quite liked the movie and cried like a bitch cause it hit home in so many ways

I wanna see!

I thought it sucked that there was no bedroom-melting-away scene. Too much caffeine consumed when writing it, not enough acid.

Srsly it should have been way more psychedelic.