Yesterday I explained my objections are to kids and kid movies, particularly ones that celebrate childhood as something sacred and wondrous where wild things run free. The best line of the piece: “The wake-up call of the Great Recession means that the age of the ‘infantilization of movies’ — a term coined by Pauline Kael, as I recall, in an attempt to describe the influence that Spielberg and Lucas began to exert in the mid ’70s — is coming to a blessed and merciful end.”

I should acknowledge that HE reader “Cde.” pointed out the following: “I don’t want to spoil the ending, but I’ll just say that [Where The Wild Things Are director] Spike Jonze seems to have a similar view to your own, which is exactly the reason that the studio freaked out and got into the huge battle with him that lasted eighteen months. They wanted reassuring, obvious bullshit that celebrates childhood and he made a film about the necessity of facing reality.

“A better way of putting all of that would be to say that Jonze wanted to make a film that was true to Maurice Sendak‘s feelings that, while children certainly have compassion, they are often unconsciously cruel or insensitive because of their lack of understanding of the world and those around them.”