"Where the Weird Things..."

Yes, it works. I'm pleasantly surprised. Spike Jonze may have a pretty good track record for mining gold out of erratic components but the combo of Dave Egger + James Gandolfini + Muppets sounded a bit too left field to succeed.

Armchair Freudians and community college psych majors will have a field day with some of the weird symbolism on screen. And despite the debate over whether this is a proper film for the kiddies, quite a few were in attendance, babbling away as I longed to watch the film in peace. It's fine for your kids unless they happen to be kind of stupid and illiterate. Nothing scarier or weirder than anything you might encounter in "The Wizard of Oz." The voice work was fantastic. Whenever I see "name" actors prominently featured in animation credits, I get a bit annoyed. But James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano are credible actors with very distinct voices and they really sell it.