I realize there might not be a lot of punch in the punchline of this comic. But I felt like authoring it because it was based off an actual conversation Cami and I had after leaving Where The Wild Things Are on Saturday and it got a laugh out of me.

For those of you looking for something a little snappier, I already have a joke in mind for Wednesday’s comic related to Where The Wild Things Are in general.

While I was swept up in the emotion of the film, Cami was apparently distracted enough by her boredom to make note of the film’s color scheme. Ultimately she came to the conclusion that – while she enjoyed the movie – it wasn’t anything she felt like she needed to see again anytime soon.

She’s right, though. There WAS an awful lot of brown in this movie.

Maybe Jonze was going for something deliberately organic to reflect the raw, untapped “otherness” of the Wild Things, but it’s not expressly overt. To that end, if you’re making mental notes about the color scheme of the film, maybe the emotional content is not reaching you in a way that it should…

For me, Where The Wild Things Are does a great job capturing the feeling of childhood. The feeling of being invincible, of having so much energy you don’t know what to do with it. Of running in a thousand different directions, making up (terrible) ad libbed stories about your adventures, talking to yourself and having all of it feel absolutely real.

That Max runs away from home one evening and traverses rough seas before landing on the island home of the Wild Things is purely incidental and deliberately unexplained by anything conventional or imaginary. Jonze is communicating clearly that we are entering into Max’s imaginary world. But he doesn’t draw a line in the sand, either.

I think what I liked most about Max, the Wild Things and the land they inhabit is even Max himself is caught off-guard by how thoroughly he’s rendered these imaginary characters. For the audience, the subtext that each one of the Wild Things reflects a component of Max’s personality adds another level of enjoyment.

From a technical standpoint, the Wild Things themselves are amazing creations. The mix of puppetry and CGI was completely seamless to me in the way that all good CGI should.

Watching the film, I knew that the Wild Things were actors running around in giant furry suits. But the way their CGI faces communicated their emotions made me believe they were real.

A by-product of the scant narrative in the original childrens book, there are a lot of open spaces in the dialogue of this movie. That leaves a lot of room for furrowed brows and concerned glances across camera. I believed in every single one of them. The Wild Things are the result of movie magic at its best.

Beyond that, I’m not sure I can do the film justice by trying to explain it any further. Not to go all New Age on you, but either it’s going to speak to your inner child, or it’s not. Anyone that ever fancied themselves an explorer or an adventurer – a creator (or destroyer) of imaginary worlds – this movie is for you.

If not, maybe all you see is two hours of brown? I don’t know. All I know is that it spoke to me and I thought it was great.

Gordontalked a little bit about and advanced screening he saw of Where The Wild Things Are on last week’s The Triple Feature. But expect Joe and I to be up to speed this week with a more thorough examination to follow during tonight’s podcast at 9:00 PM CST at TalkShoe.com

If you saw Where The Wild Things Are this weekend, I strongly encourage you to listen to the show live and contribute your .02 cents. Leave comments in the chat filed or call in to the show LIVE as we’re recording it! We’d love to hear your opinions.

Until then, I hope you enjoyed today’s comic and I will see you here again on Wednesday!