Last night, I took my daughter to the movies.

It wasn’t her first trip to the multiplex - she say a Hannah Montana movie with her classmates on a field trip with her daycare. But it was her “first trip with my family”, she told me.

There were a couple of animated movies showing but I wanted to take a chance on one of my favorite books as a kid and see the adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.  And by take a chance, I mean that I’ve read a few of reviews and heard a lot of criticism about the film being too scary.

I had thought about preparing her for it, just in case it was really bad. And I half-expected we might have to leave it early if it was too much. But I decided to not tell her anything and make her worry about it - if it was scary, it was scary and I didn’t want to plant the notion in her head.

After about 40 commercials and ten trailers, after which my daughter exclaimed, “When are they gonna show the movie? Sheesh!”, we finally got started.

And…

It was a really good film. And it didn’t seem scary in the least. More importantly, it was scary to L.A. Girl. There was a point, about two-thirds through where she was a little restless but the story picked back up with a “dirt clod fight” and she was back in the world created by Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak.

It was true to the story, even though it was an hour and a half film about a ten page book. And the most amazing thing to me were the Wild Things. Simply brilliant. They seemed like they were alive. You could see them… acting despite being a body suit/costume and computer graphic expressions. The kid was the character of Max - just like I would have pictured him as a real kid - and did a great job.

I really enjoyed it and we had a great time on our little date. We went out to dinner afterward and then back home to mom and sister. Hopefully, it’s the first of many trips to the movies with my daughters.