Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Shorter "Where the Wild Things Are" (the movie)

We are monstrous; we are loved.

(I liked it, if you were wondering; more than my kids did, I think, though they liked it too.

Unlike most of the movies my children and I watch together, it is a movie about being a child. Not a middle-aged superhero, a twentysomething restaurateur, or a grownup who must give up their self-imposed or chance isolation to fall in love, found a family, and take responsibility for larger projects. That's what we otherwise mostly watch, because that's what Pixar, Dreamworks, and company make: movies about early adult coming-of-age and midlife crisis, courtship and marriage -- with a lot of chase scenes, goofiness, pratfalls, snark, thrills, and hero-saves-the-day thrown in for buoyancy.

Dave Eggers and Spike Jones made a dark, slow, creepy, spare, gentle movie about being a kid, a movie which remembers that being a kid is very often a terrifying, daunting, and miserable affair. It has no pratfalls. The chase scenes, such as they are, are more Blair Witch than Tom & Jerry. It has no heroes, and the day is not saved; though of course, in the end, dinner is still hot. )