Steven Greydanus; Wild Things More Than a "Decent Film"

Over at Decent Films, Steven Greydanus gives the new film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are a very positive review. Steven is my go-to guy on rating films. Life is short, and cinema tickets are expensive... I don't have the time or cash to screen a lot of films that might or might not be worthwhile. While I don't always agree with SDG, he has been a reliable barometer when it comes to movies. He should have his own half-hour on EWTN. There, I said it.

I also have to confess, I was one of those just not that blown away by Wild Things as a kid. I haven't read it in a very long time, perhaps I should pick it up again.

I do think that part of my impression as (I think) a second grader was a response to adults (teachers) who absolutely gushed over the book as the Greatest Thing Ever. It seemed to me at the time that the book was also presented as a kind of primer on The Right Way To Use Your Imagination, as if me and my school friends didn't have our heads teeming with perfectly good daydreams of our own. Not that this was Sendak's idea.

That's one reason I never liked folk music as a kid, and had to approach it again as an adult, working my way backward through my biases. A lot of my teachers were young folkie wannabes, and they couldn't understand why any healthy youngster wouldn't want to sing chorus after chorus of Michael Row The Boat Ashore or Puff, The Magic Dragon as they strummed their Sears guitar. Maybe I would have had a different response to M.T.A. or Whiskey In The Jar, but that kind of thing would have been frowned on, I suppose.

By Steven Greydanus' account, the Wild Things movie sounds intriguing. Maybe it will be another opportunity to work backward through my biases.

Comments

[John Kasaian]

Your remark about a kid's response to adults gushing over folk music (or a film or literature) is an excellent one! I'm working through this in the opposite direction with my own son.
I reviewed Uncle Chestnut for our Bishp's newsletter and thought it was a great intro to Chesterton for children. If I had belabored that I think my son would have dissed the whole thing.
Instead, one evening while he was looking for something to read I tossed it to him and asked him to tell me what he thought of it.
An hour later (it is a slim little book) he came to me and couldn't stop talking about it.

From my own experience as a kid, I find that Puff The Magic Dragon and Michael Row the Boat Ashore always trigger a deep within auto-reflexive rolling of the eyeballs.

[Tom]

The book came out after I was an adult, so I can't speak from direct experience, but I think the book really sucks lemons, a market-driven button pusher, the literary equivalent of processed foods salt, sugar and MSG.

[Paul S.]

"It seemed to me at the time that the book was also presented as a kind of primer on The Right Way To Use Your Imagination, as if me and my school friends didn't have our heads teeming with perfectly good daydreams of our own."

Bingo.

Something like that was my reaction towards Spielberg's E.T. when it first came out and I was a wee lad.

[Samantha K]

The cinematography of WTWTA was impressive, no doubt, but it seemed to be missing a "spark" of some kind... maybe it was just too low energy from beginning to end for me (or at least after the first ten minutes)