Trouble in the land of the wild things

6 comments February 20th, 2008

It sounded like a genius move: Have Spike Jonze, the twisted genius behind ADAPTATION, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and dozens of great music videos, handle the directing chores on WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, a live-action take on the classic children’s book. For a long time, all we had to go by was this intriguing image, and things looked promising…

But now, reports are starting to filter out that Warner Bros., the studio behind the movie, is not happy with what Mr. Jonze is doing to their monsters. According to an article at CHUD.com, the studio is very unhappy with what they’ve seen so far, including technical issues (those monster suits are posing problems), the lead actor and the general tone of the script. Written by Jonze and Dave Eggers (author of the best-seller A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS), the script is reportedly pretty dark and subversive. In other words, like the book itself.

I haven’t seen the movie, obviously, but I like Jonze and Eggers a lot, and I’d sure hope WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE could be something more ambitious than your average dopey kids movie. There aren’t many kids movies that try something different, that aim for something more than a quick-and-painless DVD release. Aside from Pixar (a perfect batting record so far), some Disney classics and some of the Harry Potter films,  the only ones I can think of offhand are WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, THE IRON GIANT, BABE and its underrated sequel, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY. These are movies that kids could enjoy, but that they’d enjoy even more as they grew older.

Meanwhile, children’s classics like HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS and THE CAT IN THE HAT are turned into big-budget abominations, stuffed with merchandising opportunities and comedians in makeup winking at the camera. Maybe WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE would’ve been different.

Maybe we’ll never know.