You lost me right from the start in a multitude of different ways.

Let’s start with the opening scene. You know, the scene that grabs the imagination of EVERY KID WHO HAS EVER READ THE BOOK IN THE LAST 45 YEARS? The scene where — after being sent to his room — the boy’s room begins to grow jungle trees and eventually a river appears AND A SEA where the walls once were and the boy is transported to the land where the wild things are on a SPECIAL BOAT. OH MY GOD, I WANTED TO SEE THAT HAPPEN ON FILM SO BADLY. There was such a vast array of possible cinematic brilliance you could have squeezed from that one page of illustration alone! Awards! Recognition! Screaming fans! Thrilled kids! And what happened? Well, you cut that bit. Instead, the kid runs away and the trees are just trees and the river is, you know, an actual river and the boat is just a boat. It’s the opposite of magic. It’s just… reality. Kind of a depressing reality behind a chainlink fence where the boy runs to escape from his spread-too-thin mother WHO DOESN’T EVEN BOTHER TO FOLLOW HIM PAST THE FIRST BLOCK OF HIS MAD DASH FOR FREEDOM.

Maurice Sendak’s book stars a mischievous little kid — an Every Kid, if you will — who is instantly relatable by every single person who reads the story because (and not in spite) of the fact that he’s not particularly defined by his environment. Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze version stars a different sort of little kid — this one is Every Kid That No One Has Time For Who Will Never Get the Love And Attention That He Craves And Is Physically Hurt By His Sister’s Friends And Emotionally Wounded By His Sister Who He Loves Anyway And His Mum Is Really Really Busy And His Dad Is Either Dead Or Just Absent And Oh My God Your Heart Will Break Just To Look At Him Curled Up In Bed Just Wanting To Be Loved. And you send this fundamentally depressing child to a land where, instead of being surrounded by like-minded silly individuals who happen to be monsters, he is surrounded by true monsters. Real monsters. Monsters who (duh) embody all the disappointing characteristics of the people around him, but in such a simplistic way that they become one-dimensional (and scary) caricatures. They become the kind of monsters that kids truly are (and should be) afraid of. The kind of monsters that at first appear lovable and then — without warning or even a real reason — turn on you and threaten to kill you but MAN, don’t you know? IT’S BECAUSE THEY LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

What?

It’s a whole special boat of pretty heavy concepts for little kids, brought to you by the wild camera angles and nauseating camera shake of The Blair Witch Project.

So the Wild Things are child-like adult creatures who are snivelly and self-involved and worried mostly about why everything isn’t going their own way, and who — generally speaking — eat their kings when it happens that the kings cannot make them happy. They wallow in misery, lash out in anger, blame everyone else for their inner conflicts, and, in short, are egocentric violent brats. In fact, much like little kids but presented in such a way as they are not kids at all. They come across as adults who cannot cope, adults who cannot get past their childish ways, adults who need someone else to cope for them, the sorts of adults that represent not safety and joyous freedom (which they represented in the book) but rather anxiety and fear. I’m betting the kids who relate to this film the most (and not in a good way) are abused kids, kids with alcoholic or drug-addicted parents, kids who are scared and in trouble and alone, kids who have been repeatedly disappointed by the adults in their lives. Kids who expect that adults are, in short, helpless. So in the scariest scenario of all, the Wild Things are adults that need to be taken care of, forcing kids to become adults before their time. And when it happens that Max cannot be their King, cannot take all their sadness away, cannot fix everything that is broken in their wretched little world, they turn on him as though it is HIS FAULT. The number of times Carol (the monster character in whom Max seeks safety and protection) unpredictably turns on Max in a way that effectively parallels an abusive parent whalloping his victimized kid is disturbing, and even more disturbing is watching Max as an abuse-apologist: Oh, he didn’t mean it, that’s not who he really is, that’s not what he meant, it’s not his fault he acts that way, it’s not his fault that he hurt you, that you destroyed your house, that he will kill you if you do not please him.

And he’s sorry. He is.

Really, Max? Because he didn’t say so. You did. Because like every kid of every wretched parent, you WANT him to be sorry, you WANT for that not to be who he really is, you want things to be different. In the book, in fact, when the monster says, “Please don’t go, I’ll eat you up, I love you so.” Max says, “NO”. In the movie? Not so much. Well, the monster says that. But Max says… nothing.

Wow! What a fun film to take your kids to see! Maybe we can all buy a stuffed Carol to take home and cuddle at night! And then we’ll just hope that he doesn’t eat us while we sleep.

But if he does, he won’t really mean it, will he, kids?

At the end, I’m left wondering who this movie is for. It is certainly not for preschoolers, though I have no doubt that millions will see it. (Mine won’t.) It isn’t for the people, like me, who have a nostalgia for the book and were dying to see how that magic would translate on screen — for us, it’s just a bastardization of a much loved children’s book to turn it into something dark and fundamentally disturbing. It’s a bunch of missing words and altered lines. It’s taking something about mischief and turning it into something ugly about human nature. There are a lot of truths in here, but they are truths I’d rather my kids didn’t have to think about for a good long time.

Oh, hang on. I’ve just realized who this film IS for, it’s for the rest of the crowd that filled the theatre late on a Friday night: It’s for teenagers. Teenagers who are really really high.

And that’s a really REALLY big disappointment.

Let the wild rumpus stop.