The past decade has been something of a renaissance in the children’s film genre. While the ‘70s and ‘80s brought us classic children’s films both animated and live action (“Watership Down,” “E.T.,” “The Black Stallion”), with a few exceptions (“The Iron Giant”), the ‘90s seemed to be devoted to pandering “Home Alone” rip-offs and movies about pets that wear sunglasses and play sports. This year alone we’ve seen another blockbuster ‘Harry Potter’ film (which, like them or not, helped spur this movement by hiring a visionary like Alfonso Cuaron), and possibly Pixar’s best movie yet (“Up”).
Now with Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” and Wes Anderson’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” being released within a month, it’s clear that even the most idiosyncratic auteur can bring brilliance out of a slim children’s book. Whether or not these films are more entertaining for the children or their parents is up for debate, but this new movement has us jazzed at the potential for other classics from our childhood to hit the big screen under a visionary’s watchful eye.
The Halloween Tree — Normally the scent of anything remotely educational is anathema to children, but Fahrenheit 451 writer Ray Bradbury’s 1972 fantasy novel is one of the few examples of a work that kids like because of what it teaches them; in this case, the history of Halloween and its relationship to the fear of death. Originally conceived as a feature collaboration with animator Chuck Jones, Bradbury’s story is of eight trick-or-treaters who find their friend has been taken on a possibly fatal journey by the mysterious Moundshroud. The boys follow Moundshroud through time and across cultures, learning about the funereal practices of the Celtic Druids, the Mexican Day of the Dead and the traditions of ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans (among others) came to produce the modern version of All Hallow’s Eve. Though Bradbury made it into an average animated TV movie in the early ‘90s, the story deserves better, and the illustrations by Joe Mugnaini—equal parts gorgeous and ghoulish—would be a great jumping off point for a visionary director.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar — Okay, so maybe not a children’s book per se, but Roahl Dahl’s 1977 short story is undoubtedly a fable, albeit one that doesn’t involve little kids or talking animals. The title character is a man with natural psychic abilities which he hones with the assistance of a yogi master who helps him to develop the ability to see through playing cards and predict the near future. Naturally he uses these abilities in order to win at Roulette and black jack, but soon becomes bored with winning and finds he isn’t interested in the money, so he literally throws it out the window, inciting a riot. When an angry police man tells him he should do something productive with the cash, like give it to orphanages, Sugar decides to do just that and decides to establish the finest orphanages in the world. The rest of the story involved Vegas, mafiosos and myriad disguises. Like we said, maybe not little kid’s stuff, but still a PG-level fable—more in line with the Coens’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” or PG-Wes Anderson. Dahl’s daughter Lucy reported to Collider that “Sugar” has become a hot property in Hollywood as of late, but no details on who may be interested in buying (or if the picky heir is even selling).
Bunnicula — This 1979 comic horror novel by husband-and-wife team Deborah and James Howe concerns a cat and dog who become concerned for their own safety—and that of their owners—when they suspect that the mysterious new bunny the family brought home from the movie theater may be a vampire. When vegetables begin to turn up drained of their juice, the duo decide they must slay the rabbit before it turns to blood. Why is this book better than your average adventure tale featuring anthropomorphic animals? It’s all in the execution: the authors deal with the animals in a realistic manner—this isn’t “Underdog,” or even “Mr. Fox”—these cats and dogs have real world limitations which is where most of the action—and humor—is derived. But because we can’t stand CGI’d talking on animals and the “Look Who’s Talking Now” style voiceover always falls flat, we’re going to hope for Pixar — or a studio of similar quality — to take a look at this one.
Redwall — Though adapted into a Canadian TV series back in the late ’90s, and some bogus production company named Imagen started a website claimed to be producing a CGI’d movie of Brian Jaques’ woodland creature warriors for a 2011 release, there are in fact no plans to produce a big screen adaptation of the 1986 fantasy novel or its myriad sequels. The series of books, no doubt inspired by Richard Adams’ Watership Down, features the adventures of anthropomorphic animals of all sorts (often mice) who live in and around Redwall Abbey. The first book concerns an attack on the abbey by a one-eyed rat named Cluny the Scourge. While the Redwallers try in earnest to defend themselves, a young servant mouse embarks on a quest to find the legendary sword of the great mouse hero and founder of Redwall, Martin the Warrior. With the ridiculous success of “Lord of the Rings” series we can’t imagine why this similarly themed series aimed at a slightly younger set hasn’t been made yet, but we think the failure of certain C.S. Lewis series probably has something to do with it. And while we’d love to see some sort of stop-motion for this one, CGI or hand drawn animation is probably far more likely.
“Tales Of A Fourth Grade Nothing”
Judy Blume’s empathetically told, classic tale of pre-angsty, pre-adolescent nine-year-old’s growing pains — dealing with the encroaching holy terror of a little brother invading his personal space and privacy, could be transposed the same way Jonze and Anderson carefully crafted their children’s tales — told through an adult perspective and perhaps not entirely for a kids audience. If told effectively and compassionately with an acute ear for childhood pains, adventuring and with some raw emotion, ala “Where The Wild Things Are,” you could have the “Rushmore” for the elementary school set (especially if one added negotiating the emotional anguish and travails of primary school, and that’s also in the novel a bit if we recall). Then again, we could be remembering it wrong and it could turn out like “Adventure’s In Baby Sitting” if put into the wrong hands, but that goes for all children’s source materials. Wes and Jonze showed a little bit more thought and a little less pandering can go a long way. There was a lot of candid humor, tenderness and honesty in these books (there were several sequels, though none quite as successful as the original) and it perfectly captured the wondrous, daydreaming-like boyhood bubble world many of us lived in — truthfully, it meant to the world to us at the time and we re-read it over and over.
“The Little Prince”
How does one adapt Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous and dearly beloved surreal fairy tale novella, essentially an existentialist take on wisdom, human nature and the meaning of life as told by an airplane pilot who crash lands in the Sahara desert and and meets up with a little prince? The intro is basic adventure-y stuff: the badly damaged airplane leaves this pilot (the narrator) stranded with very little food or water and as he’s worrying over his predicament, he is approached by the little prince, who it turns out is from the planet Asteroid 325. Then it gets trickier (and more emotional) as the Prince reveals he left his world to explore other planets and cure his loneliness after falling in love with a rose that lied to him. He explains to the narrator that adults are strange, silly beings and his encounters on the way to Earth he meets a king, a vain man, a drunkard, a businessman, a lamplighter, and a geographer all preoccupied with their personal lives (he also meets a snake and befriends a fox). Ok, truthfully, it does sound awesome to us (we love the book, but it has been several years), but it is a melancholy tale, with a lot of life-large abstract themes that are way above the average child’s head. Still, if someone could manage to make live-action film out of this one, we’d be there in a heartbeat (again, a ‘Wild Things’-like approach would likely be artistically grand; whether it would connect with mainstream audiences is another story). Granted, there was the 1974 version, but a modern update would be ideal.
While these books may or may not ever get made by Hollywood, it’s worth noting that some books we originally looked at for this feature are already in various stages of production, most notably for us an adaptation of Dahl’s “The BFG” by “Black Beauty” and “E.T.” writer Melissa Mathison. For the most part, children’s films do gangbusters at the box office, and with the success of the Potter movies (and, to an extent, the young adult-targeted “Twilight” series), don’t expect them to go anywhere soon. And more thoughtful versions of kids stories will be coming soon. While not based on a kid’s book, Alfonso Cuarón has “A Boy and His Shoe” hitting hopefully sometime next year, and Ang Lee has “Life of Pi,” about the son of an Indian zookeeper who is shipwrecked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and shares his lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger. That one too is not a kids book per se, but it has some of those fantastical sensibilities to be sure (it doesn’t scream Rated-R or anything). And while the financial semi-disappointment of ‘Wild Things’ doesn’t help the chances of real art being made out of these properties, “Fantastic Mr. Fox” opens in wide release this weekend and will probably fare a little better (it simply cost less). — additional reporting RP
