If you are thinking about taking your kids to see “Where the Wild Things Are”…think again. This movie has received a stern warning from Michael Medved.
This movie is extremely dark, disturbing & terrifying; it nearly deserves an R rating. The monsters are not just innocent fantasy characters, but the effects of serious mental illness suffered by the main character. The boy is bi-polar & violent toward his family. In one scene, the main monster (Gandofini’s character) tries to kill the kid, so he repels inside of the maternal monster… literally INSIDE. Ugh. It looks like a beloved children’s book has been adapted into a very adult movie, much to the delight of a very deranged & fatalistic Hollywood industry. Don’t trust the critics: screen it first before taking little kids.
Thanks for posting this Ken. I kind of had this movie on the radar screen as one to possibly take the kids to see. I don’t think that will be the case now!
“I’m amazed though by the way some Christians react to things like this. They furrow their brow because the Max character screams at this mother, and bites her, even though this is hardly glorified in the movie. They wag their heads at how “dark” the idea of this wild world is. Of course it is ‘dark.’ The universe is dark; that’s why we need the Light of Galilee.
Where the Wild Things Are isn’t going to be a classic movie the way it is a classic book. But the Christian discomfort with wildness will be with us for a while. And it’s the reason too many of our children find Maurice Sendak more realistic than Sunday school.”
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Methinks thou dost protest too much…
This is simply a warning to screen the movie before taking little kids. Seems to me like good advice.
Whatever happened to the children’s stories where queens want to cut out the hearts of young ladies and put them in boxes?
Just posting a different perspective — not my words. But it does sound like MM has something against the imagination of a child.
I saw the movie; I enjoyed the movie, though it did lack a plot. It had some biblical themes, the longing for community, sin as a disruption of community. It preach emotionalism, Max is never punished for acting out, he even gets chocolate cake for his disobedience. Rightness and wrongness is ascertained by how you feel about it; of course it is a child who is telling the story. The problem is the parent feeds into this idea.
It is probably not for kids under 7 or 8.
“It is probably not for kids under 7 or 8.”
That’s the point of my warning. The book was written for preschoolers. The movie is NOT for preschoolers (in the opinion of the reviewer I quoted).