I am a nerd. A deeply nostalgic and overly sentimental nerd.

I’m kind of having a dilemma. You see, being the snotty English major that I am, I usually find the thought of turning iconic children’s books into movies pretty abhorrent. Mostly because the majority of these books are so simple and short that in order to turn them into feature films the writers have to add all these elements that make the story more complicated, realistic, and "grown-up” in feel.

For example, the first time I saw a poster advertising a film version of the Dr. Seuss classic The Cat in the Hat, I thought “what in the devil are they going to do to make that book into a movie? It’s about a cat barging into a house and creating chaos with a couple of kids while rhyming.” The answer? Add a bunch of random subplots, including a single mom’s dissatisfaction with her job and a sleazy neighbor who has some mysterious vendetta against the children.

Same thing goes for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. In picture book form, it’s a simple story imagining a world where food falls from the sky. The movie, from what I have gathered by watching the previews, centers the plot around an inventor that creates this phenomenon, thereby completely changing the nature of the story.

I’m sure there are plenty of other picture books that have been given this same treatment- I’ve even heard that my beloved Eloise was turned into some made-for-TV monstrosity- and it kind of bothers me. I mean, you can make a movie out of a novel or even a longer, more detailed children’s book while remaining true to the tone and nature of the story, but when you take a simplistic book of 100 words or less and make it into a two-hour movie, you are invariably transforming it into something completely different.

I mean, isn’t the whole beauty of being a kid that you can read books like this and thoroughly enjoy them without any additional detail? You don’t need an explanation as to why food falls from the sky or why a six-year-old girl lives at the Plaza Hotel without any parents. I guess what worries me about this whole business is that somewhere out there a kid is going to pick up a copy of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and, instead of enjoying the pure whimsy of the story, is going to wonder where the inventor from the film version is. And that is sad.

Anyways, back to the dilemma I mentioned at the beginning of this post. When I heard that Spike Jonze was making a film version of Where the Wild Things Are, I was determined to boycott it for all the reasons listed above. But then I saw the trailer. Which is, well, kind of freaking awesome:



True, I’m not too keen on the filmmakers complicating the story and potentially making it a little too “touchy-feely” for my taste, but other elements of this movie look pretty fantastic. I love how the cinematography interprets Maurice Sendak’s illustrations, love how the “wild things” look fuzzy and real and not all CGI’d, and think the little boy they cast as Max is cute as a button. Plus any kids movie that has an Arcade Fire song in the preview is bound to be pretty cool.

So here’s hoping Where the Wild Things Are doesn’t suck. Because right now it is my only hope for getting over my nerdishly cynical ways.