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Don't miss this one, guys.

I waited to see it until this Friday because it was my birthday and I had deemed Where The Wild Things Are to be my Official Birthday Party Movie. My local theater helped out by giving out official WTWTA Burger King-style paper crowns. The film itself is the masterpiece critics (at least the ones with their heads screwed on right) are deeming it to be, quite literally a work of art. One could even hesitate calling it a kid's flick, as it is easier to think of it as an art film about childhood for grown-ups. Take the kids anyway, it's good for them.

I was particularly won over by the Wild Things and their performances. It's like you're getting these 70s method actor performances articulating the raw and unfiltered Ids of children. Except with grown-ups doing the voices and the physical work done with greatest Muppet Show Sweetums monster suits that will ever be made. The combination of these various elements is astounding. There's no lag in "getting used to" these effects, you instantly accept these beings as real people, ones whom you feel you've known for years. The whole Wild Things ensemble is wonderful, but I have to give special props for James Gandolfini. Some truly inspired casting there. Even when Gandolfini is not speaking, the physical movements of the suit actor combined with the flawless CGI facial expressions both seem to be organic extensions of the Gandolfini performance.

Remember the scene from Taxi Driver, when De Niro's Travis Bickle goes outside with Peter Boyle's Wizard to try and explain what's going on inside his head? Remember how confused, awkward, and inarticulate both characters were? That's exactly how the Wild Things are. Except desperately trying to convey the extreme emotional needs of a child.

I've never seen anything quite like this film. Child psychologists and stoners will be studying it for decades. Everyone else will just be too busy loving it.

But don't just take my word for it. Click this link for The VERN Review. He's the one who convinced me that I was presenting nothing less than a GODDAMN MIRACLE for my birthday:

Jeff is right. Do not wait for DVD.

You know, in my enthusiasm above, I might have come on a bit too strong in suggesting that critics (or anybody) have something wrong with them if they didn't think of this film as anything less than a masterpiece. I have read some pans from critics that are utterly ridiculous in their wrong-headed reasoning, but I can appreciate some of the tepid reactions. Bob Cashill's review is a fair assessment of why he felt the movie didn't fully work. But I do think Bob's suggestion towards the end ("This is the one movie that could have used some of Jack Black’s undisciplined rowdiness.") is almost too scary to contemplate!:

Where The Dreamworks Things Are

If I were to step back and attempt to balance out my raves above, I'd say the film does have some moments of lag that go along with its plotless and dreamy narrative. I might have been tempted to look at my watch, but everything onscreen looked too amazing to miss.

I think I would have loved an appearance by that sea monster that Max sees before all the other Wild Things, perhaps rising up as a dark silhouette of Sendak's drawing, almost like something out of the recent Call Of Cthulhu.

Anyone else see this?

Saw this last weekend with my son, and can vouch for its wonderfulness. Somehow I got through his childhood without ever reading the book (or being too drowsy at the time to remember it), so I was unencumbered by comparisons, as I was by having read reviews. What a sad movie! I caught my son, who's fifteen now, looking away from the screen a couple times, as if he'd recognized various people from his life in those Wild Things. Did they look as big from a near row on the IMAX screen as they did when he first saw them? And scary? There's very little more I can or would articulate on the content or merits of what was up there (I can only imagine the difficulty of reviewing it for print), but it works on you if you let it. It worked on me.

Ok, your turn, Jeff. What did you think?

Funny you should ask - I'm going back for a second visit tonight! I'll get back to ya...