I got a chance to see Where The Wild Things Are last night, opening night ... I was really excited about this film. From watching the trailer I thought, oh man, this looks cool. A story about a little kid that just doesn't adjust well growing up, and is having a hard time. That's what I figured anyway. And the movie followed that theme, a bit, but for the most part ... it was just weird, and I have no idea what just happened. At the same time, though, I can't get it out of my head at all. It was very impressionable.
The human part of the story was really incredible and very moving, and they could have made a movie just out of that part, it was so well done and they were on a great roll. When he sails off to the island and finds the monsters though, things just get weird. I won't get into details because I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but suffice it to say, it was not what I was expecting in the least. The general feeling I got the whole time was confusion. I was sitting there thinking, "what the heck is going on? and why?"
So, I'm not really sure what to say about it, much less figure out what my opinion is. I thought it was a bit too .... serious, and a bit disturbing at times. I dunno. Weird. Go see it, though. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it around me.
Edit: Read Roger Ebert's review. I generally agree pretty closely with what he writes, and in this case, he puts exactly what I'm trying to say into words much better than I do.
So I take it you've never read the book?
Yah, when I was a kid. I don't think I got it then, either.
Interesting... I wasn't sure what to think from the trailers. My kids aren't familiar with the book either (yes I know, bad mom) so maybe I'll get them into that first and then take them to the dollar theater.
This movie is one of the finest I've seen in a long time. There is so much meaning embedded into every single scene, it's unbelievable. You must've missed most of it. (Super-quick summary of just a few things: there's the hero journey plot structure (hero prepared for journey, then journeys, learns lesson, returns home, and applies it to homeland; see ancient myths for plenty of examples. Also, there's lots and lots of parallelism. Everything in the monster world represents some idea or thing from the real world.)
I could honestly buy this movie and see it several times before it would begin to be boring.