movie review

One of my (many) favorite books as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. My mother didn't like it AT ALL, but it still remained a favorite for me and my younger siblings. Years later, while taking a children's lit class (Mom went back to college when I did to finish her elementary education degree...after teaching for 12 years) Mom called me and said she suddenly saw that book in a different light. As a parent she just saw it as a child being disrespectful and then punished, as an educator of children examining it through a child's eyes, she realized it was much more than that: disobedience, consequences, emotions, fatigue, imagination, parental love and security. That's a lot for such a little book. So I was quite excited to see a while back that it was made into a movie. Target really had the movie for $4.75, and while sick last week I actually watched.

And I was terribly disappointed.

Had the main character looked more the age in the book (4-5) as opposed to 9-10 years old, it might have been a little better. But seeing a child who appeared to be in at least 4th grade acting crazy in a costume while making ostentatious demands and attacking people and things didn't settle too well with me. Over all, I found the movie VERY sad, and thought it totally missed the point of the book: that actions have consequences, but parents still love us even when do bad things.

This isn't a movie I'll be keeping. :(