After hearing Los Angeles Times' Ken Turan's deeply negative review of the new film version of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book "Where the Wild Things Are" on "Morning Edition," one could be forgiven for believing director Spike Jonze had created an artistic disaster. Turan said:

It's painful to say this, and even more painful to watch it, but Maurice Sendak's beloved Where the Wild Things Are has been turned into a self-indulgent cinematic fable that neither parents nor children are going to like.

But Turan's view is far from the consensus of major reviewers. Reviewers for the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post for instance, are raving about "Where The Wild Things Are."

The Tribune's Michael Phillips writes this, for instance:

Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of " Where the Wild Things Are." Not since Robert Altman took on "Popeye" a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, from the moment in the prologue at which director Spike Jonze freezes the action (Max, fork in hand, tearing after the family dog) to the final scene's hard-won reconnection between Max and his mother at the kitchen table. Warner Bros. Pictures should be applauded for such a nervy and breathtaking achievement — the rare adaptation that goes deeper, not dumber, in its page-to-screen translation of a children's classic.

 

Rotten Tomato says 66 percent of "top critics" reviewed the movie positively.

The New Yorker's David Denby gives an ambivalent review.

The opening sequences of Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are"—a live-action feature based on Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's classic—are sensationally good.

But Denby believes the film, unlike the book, will spook six and seven-year olds. Of course if you go to watch it without young children, that wouldn't matter.

All in all, between the awesome costumes, the corps of actors who provide the voices — including James Gandolfini and Forest Whitaker — and the fact that the reviews are, on balance, positive, it would be surprising if the film winds up not succeeding at the box office, although it has a big hurdle to get over to do so. It reportedly cost about $100 million to make.