Dude, that’s the best part of that website. You can pretty much swap out the word “white” with “young, ultra-hip and liberal.” I wasn’t making fun of you, btw, I just thought that was funny.
Heh, no offense taken. 
I was just funnin’, too.
I totally want to do the Mad Men party and then drop the line about serving all of you. I’m not black, but still, I think I could pull it off.
Sure, it’s a scary book, but a lot of my favourite childhood stories were scary to some degree. Kids LIKE being scared, at least in small doses - how else do you explain the fact that Roald Dahl’s books have been favourites for so long? Or the fact that my generation loved The Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story, both of which scared the pants off me the first time I watched them?
As far as the movie version goes, I can’t imagine a more perfect director for this movie than Spike Jonze.
Okay, Michel Gondry is a really really close second… but he’s disappointed me with his last few movies, and this is a story that I love too dearly to let him ruin it for me.
I just love how Jonez gave everything that dreamy sepia toned feel, I love that they chose a song by Arcade Fire for the previews, and I love how the monsters look exactly as I imagined them. I don’t even mind that the voices don’t sound monster-y… it makes them less scary, and more real.
Have I mentioned how excited I am about this movie? 
Downright giddy, even.
Agreed. I always hate when we have threads on the Dope where people talk about, “Oh, I HATED _____, it made me cry for days.” Granted, this is sad, not scary, but I never got that. I even asked some of them if they genuinely meant it and they said yes. I don’t get that. Books are to make us feel and experience…experience everything, not just sanitized happy rainbow worlds.
Oh, wow, thank you for introducing me to stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. Surely I must be years late to the party on that site, but I’m amazed at how funny that site can be while hitting me right where it hurts over and over again.
The Slate Culture Gabfest podcast summed up what my expectations of this movie are when one of the reviewers said that it was better than she expected, but not good enough to deserve to exist. Eventually I’ll see this movie (probably on free-to-air TV), and it will be better than the utter pile of poo that the trailer led me to believe that it will be. I say this because very, very few movies are ever as bad as I’m expecting this movie to be.
But I can’t see it as establishing its own right to exist.
None of which actually answers the basically reasonable question of whether it’s a movie that 5-year-olds are likely to enjoy. That’s not necessarily an issue of “ooh, we must protect our precious poppets from anything that would harm their delicate little brains”, but there are certainly plenty of movies that wouldn’t be good to take a 5-year-old to for plenty of legitimate reasons.
I have two good friends with 5-year-old twins. Should we all go see this movie?
Wait, is that 1,500 easy bake ovens, or 1000.5 easy bake ovens?
It’s important to be precise in this sort of thing.
Usually you see that because something’s manipulative instead of authentically sad.
But I’ve heard people say that about Where the Red Fern Grows! And Bridge to Terabithia! On this very site! And apparently the real reason they retconned the dog dying alone in Futurama was because people were too sad–it was so much better that way.
I vaguely remember a thread that you’re probably thinking of as well. I can’t recall the title, but the topic was children’s books that are actually inappropriate for children, or traumatic children’s books, something like that.
I too got the impression that a fair number of Dopers considered any book that wasn’t non-stop joy and laughter inappropriate for younger readers.
Well we had that, but then I started a thread asking people to clarify–my OP was something like, “Those of you who say Oh I hated that book–it made me so sad, are you serious or facetious” and a good deal of them were serious. I will try to find the thread.
ETA: Here it is. Books/movies that make you cry--do you genuinely dislike this? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
This is an example of what I mean. I don’t see what’s so bad about writing a book to make people feel sad if you do it in a good way. People cared about the Old Yeller character and about the protagonist. That makes it, in my opinion, an effective book. I just don’t get the reaction that that’s a bad thing. I like being moved that way. It rarely happens but when it does, it shows what a great writer the author is.
I wouldn’t take a 5 year old to the movies. Ever. At that age, asking them to sit still and be quiet for more than 20 minutes at a time is pretty much impossible.
There’s a reason why the original book has all of ten sentences.
But seriously, I think the content of the movie is not appropriate for very young children… not because it’s too scary, but because it’s just a little too adult in its tone and language, and wouldn’t be interesting enough hold their attention for long. An eight-year old, on the other hand, would probably enjoy it a lot.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say that it’s too scary nor too sad. I think that if it’s not appropriate to kids, it’s because it’s too slow paced and monotonous.
Kids with patience will appreciate this movie though. The rest will be alternating between falling asleep and bawling their eyes out.
I read the NY Times review yesterday and it has me leaning toward seeing the movie. But for some reason we’re not that good about making it to movies even if we resolve to see them, so it’s a tossup.
Your parents are awesome!
Wild things? Freudian Slit’s excellent first post summed up far more eloquently what I’ve been thinking since seeing the trailer, but I’d still like to see it.
That was eloquent?! I thought it was vitriolic and rage filled. Oh well, I suppose it can be both.
NPR reviewed it and this worries me:
And apparently Max leaves the island because he’s afraid he’s destroyed it or something. The Wild Things I knew and loved didn’t care about their land turning to dust…they were just wild. They were pure unadulterated id and they were fun and full of destruction. Max came because he was wild and didn’t want to do dull things like follow the rules. And he left because living with pure id gets tiresome and he wanted to go home, be loved, have dinner and such. I guess I prefer a more psychological viewing of it–they aren’t actual wild things with problems of their owns. They’re monstrous monsters!
Indeed it can - all I ever did after seeing the trailers was spit and rage but could never say why I had such a bad feeling about the movie.
We all saw Ponyo last month and it worked out fine… but WTWTA definitely sounds like it might be more of a movie about childhood from a grownup perspective than a movie that will appeal to children.
I wonder what a Terry Gilliam version would have been like; but I think we’ll all quite happily go see the Spike Jonze version.