I’m still working on it.

Did I like the new movie “Where the Wild Things Are”?

… Yes. Yes, I think I can say that I did.

Wait, I’m hesitating. Did I not like it?

… Well … no, I liked it. I liked it a lot. In fact, I thought there were moments of utter brilliance. And the boy! Max! The emotions that crossed the stillness of that freckled face! Where did they find this kid?

But the monsters, the Wild Things. Did I like them? With them being such a large part of the movie and all?

… Um. I’m working on that. Sometimes I thought they were wonderful. Mostly I found them annoying and whiny and more like big furry Woody Allen characters. But they were obviously written to be, supposed to be, annoying and whiny and neurotic, so what does that mean? What were they supposed to represent? What message was I supposed to take from that?

I can read them on multiple levels. They were aspects of Max’s own feelings; depression, anger, calm acceptance. No, they were representations of the people in Max’s “real world;” his mother, his sister, his teacher. No, they were who they were and he was just reacting to them being who they were, and, in the process, learning something about himself. No, they represent something even deeper and I’m just not smart enough to catch the vision.

I’m still working on it.

One thing I’m sure of: This movie is for Thinking Children Only, and they should be age 6 or older. It is absolutely not a film for the 5-years-and-under set. Not so much because it would scare them, although parts certainly might, but because it is not what they have no doubt come to expect a movie to be. It is not a cartoon. The big fuzzy creatures are not necessarily likable. The emotions are dark and lonely and conflicted.  There are no pop-culture wisecracks, no fart jokes, no cute talking animals.

This is also why only Thinking Children, or Children Willing to be in a Thinking Mood, should see it. The other sort will be puzzled and bored and probably will leave the theater muttering, “I don’t, like, get it or whatever. That was totally, like, stupid.”

Make that Thinking Adults, too.

Do the Princesses fall into the Thinking Children category? Sometimes. Not always. I’m sure that if I gave them the choice they’d prefer “Barbie and the Three Musketeers.” Neither was interested in seeing this movie. I did not know it would be for Thinking People Only, but to their credit, I believe, both said they liked it. I asked Slightly Older Princess if she’d ever felt like Max. “Once,” she said quietly. I’m still not sure what she meant.

I’m also still trying to figure out whether this movie belongs in the category of “changes to a book done well” or “changes to a book so as to make the book unrecognizable and they shouldn’t have claimed a link.” If it were a movie based on an adult novel, or even a young adult novel, I would be all over that first category. But it started as a child’s picture book with something like 20 pages and two dozen words, and this movie is not for small children. Not at all. It is completely removed from that audience. Yet as slim as it is, I can feel the Sendak story through nearly everything on the screen, except those curiously neurotic Wild Things themselves, so you couldn’t possibly give the story a new title or pretend it isn’t somehow related.

I’m still working on it.

If you see it, tell me what you think.