I don't recall feeling one way or the other about Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" as a child -- I'm pretty sure I didn't like it, possibly because my numerous imaginary worlds tended to be grounded in some realistic element (spies, towns, criminals), possibly because it was popular. Well, it seems I still can't like wherever it is that all the wild things happen to be.

Respect the game, etc. etc. The film does several things stunningly well--not least among them, the gorgeous, golden quality of the visuals. Max's sailing escapades practically have a Kennedy-esque meets Robinson Crusoe quality (chipped cream-colored paint, dark blue seas, golden skies) that, combined with the exquisite camera work, make you want to be sailing. These elements--the visuals, the camera work--work beautifully throughout.The choice of puppets and actors over digital animation make the monsters feel real, as does the accompanying voice work (highest honors to Chris Cooper's Douglas, who is the reassuring voice of reason).

Even the lack of plot stuns. Now, some may dislike the somewhat modernist approach to lifting a 380-word children's book set piece with a wafer-thin plot into a dark, atmospheric sojourn of a motion picture, but, again, respect the game. Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers move from the very fantastic opening set in a modern, wintry suburb where Catherine Keener wants to be a good mother, but also keep her job, and find a man, and Max's sister is too cool to hang out with him, and her friends destroy his snow fort because they think they're just playing along, and so on and so forth. The movie's not a story about being nine, it is about being nine.

But why can't they have any goddamn fun?

Carol, KW, Judith, Alexander, Ira--all are sad, lonely creatures with complex and complicated pasts and feelings. The film takes these complexities and pasts and feelings so seriously, that the latter half of the film becomes this game of sussing out how exactly the beginning of the film projects and parallels the monsters. For every awesome unceremonious, realistic element, like Max avoiding the bull-looking monster in fear, but without comment, there's a broken relationship or new anxiety to confront. It gets exhausting. "Will you make the sadness go away," Alexander asks Max, and Jesus, you sure hope he will.

No one ever has any fun without it all getting ruined (whether that's building a fort or having a dirt fight) or the oppressive weight of impending ruination, immediately thereafter. It's seriously at this point (...and, yes, I took 20 minutes out of my Friday night to cut a fake ad for WTWTA):

Yes, as Jonze has said, it's important to treat children as adults--the best movies do--but they are still children. In the canon here, Max projects his dilemmas onto this imaginary world and then the world, like a Golem, expands beyond his creative control in a way, but why would Max imagine creatures immersed in such futile, sad, difficult lives as an escape?

Perhaps if that open-aired sailing, or the dirt war, or the fort building were allowed some sort of continuity, some kind of true weightless fun, an escape from the sadness, the film would deserve the crux of its plot being: Will you keep us all together? Will you make the sadness go away?

All I ask for is dark and light together, Spike.