Where The Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze.
This is a film adaptation of a very famous kids book by Maurice Sendak. American famous, though, which means I only read it when I first heard of this movie this year and was thus unburdened by any sort of long term attachment. Briefly, a nine year old boy fights with his mum, voyages off to an island, meets some monsters, becomes their king and is home in time for tea. It needed to be padded out to movie length but it's a testament to the film that it all feels just like the book, with the same dark, dreamy quality.
This is a proper kids movie, folks, a serious kids movie in that it is told at the exact level of a nine year old boy. It's fun and exciting and not a little scary, but it is also grubby and unpleasant at times. Most of all, the monsters are basically kids, too, so that their moods are changeable and they often feel scared or lonely. They don't, however, have parents (about which more later). The film is actually a little uncomfortable at times, as most good kids movies are. Interchanging slapstick destruction with genuine fear, which is basically what being a nine year old boy is all about, it's a beautifully unvarnished show, a real contrast to the slick, glossy, "comes with adult gags too" sort of films that target kids nowadays.
There's a point, too, which is that being a kid has advantages and disadvantages. You have to do what you're told but you also get minded. There's a moment where the boy says to one of the monsters "I wish you had a mom". I read a review of this film in one of the "big" US papers where the reviewer complained that children would leave the movie wondering why the monsters were all unhappy. I asked my eight year old what he thought the boy meant about wishing for a mom for the monsters and he calmly explained that the monsters needed a mom so they'd behave and then they'd be happier. Maybe he should write reviews.
