Please leave the lights on (From Oxford Mail)

Where the wild things are

9:34am Thursday 18th December 2008

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

Word has reached me that indie filmmaker Spike Jonzes’ version of Where the Wild Things are by Maurice Sendak has been pulled by the studio for being to adult and horrifying for its intended audience. Now correct me if I’m wrong but this is a children’s picture book about a mischievous boy who gets sent to bed without any supper, who imagines an island populated by cuddly monsters with whom he can frolic without parental interference. I’ve read it many times to my son and as far as I can remember there aren’t any undercurrents of child abuse or abandonment, so it makes you wonder what the hell Mr Jones and amazingly Dave Eggers (literary wonder kid of the New York scene) were thinking. If they wanted to make a film about the darkness at the heart of childhood they could have just written an original screenplay, or if they were too lazy for that just film another adaptation of Lord of the Flies.

Of course they aren’t the only filmmakers guilty of violating our childhood. You only have to look at the recent spate of comic book movies to see more of the same. Even gothic poster boy Tim Burton is about to film yet another version of Alice in Wonderland, staring, yes you guessed it, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. Gold help our children. Does nobody remember his awful version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

So just who are they aiming these films at? Child prodigies or intellectually challenged fund managers?

A more perverse reaction to all this may be that beleaguered studio-heads desperate at the lack of adaptable children’s fair may turn to more adult source material with an eye to making them more palatable for children.

Imagine a reworking of Last House on the Left where the violated teenager is replaced by a small girl who gets tickled rather too enthusiastically at a birthday party resulting in a slightly bruised funny bone. This leads her parents to exact a terrible revenge on the perpetrators by not inviting them to her birthday party.

It has everything, social commentary, lots of tickling and perhaps the best tag line in years – To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It’s only a birthday party, it’s only a birthday party."

As Alice would say ‘Curiouser and curiouser’