“Where the Wild Things Are” is the sort of film I usually love.

It’s got the fantasy world that’s unlike anything that’s ever been put on screen before, brilliant source material, cool indie-rock. Some critics have even gone so far as to call “Where the Wild Things Are” the best film about childhood ever, and I am a sucker for films about childhood.

And yet ... this film is unlovable. At least for me. There are people out there who love it, and whenever I read one of their reviews, I wonder if we even saw the same film. Maybe your reaction to “Where the Wild Things Are” depends on what kind of childhood you had. If you had a fairly happy childhood, as I did, you may find it tough to relate to our lonely protagonist, 9-year-old Max, and the whining, insecure Wild Things who populate the dark recesses of his psyche. They are, quite possibly, the most irritating fantasy creatures ever put on screen. There’s a reason Slate called it “Where the Mopey Things Are.” In any case, I found it impossible to love these Wild Things.

But let me back up. There are a lot of good things about “Where the Wild Things Are,” the long-awaited film adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book. Director Spike Jonze has created a world that’s really quite beautiful, and there are some breathtaking shots of Max and Carol, the leader of the Wild Things, walking across desert sand, and gazing at the ocean, and building massive, oddly shaped forts out of sticks. If this was a silent film, it might really be something special. But it’s not, and problems arise whenever the Wild Things start talking.

It’s been a while since I read “Where the Wild Things Are,” but it’s just about perfect — the scary/funny story of a misbehaving boy who is sent to his room without any supper, and dreams up a land where he becomes king of the wild things. “Where The Wild Things” the book is about the wildness of childhood, about the urge to create and destroy, and to just run around like screaming like a maniac.

Unfortunately, “Where the Wild Things Are” the film is about the intrinsic sadness of childhood, and how life just gets sadder the older you get. Max, you see, is a child of divorce. His father is absent, his mother is too busy and his older sister and her friends destroy his igloo during a snowball fight that, I’d like to point out, Max actually instigated. I didn’t have a problem with this back-story, which is told from Max’s point of view, and is one of the best parts of the movie: a vivid, action-packed evocation of what it’s like to be a 9-year-old kid. One minute you’re having a great time, throwing snowballs at everybody, the next minute you’re crying because someone destroyed your igloo.

When I was a kid we used to play this great game called Fool, where we turned off all the lights in the house except the ones in the living room, so my mother could sit and read the newspaper and roll her eyes at us, and ran around the house jumping on each other and hiding under beds. Fool was a lot of fun, but it usually ended when one of us started crying because someone had kicked us in the face or punched us in the neck. This is just how Fool worked, but in a film like “Where the Wild Things Are” such games are symbolic of the pain of being a kid, because, you know, life is pain and part of being an adult is figuring out how to block out the pain. I don’t know. It’s true that there are sad children out there, and I don’t doubt that children from broken homes carry around a special sort of sadness. But I kept thinking of “E.T.,” which is about an extra-terrestrial, and also about divorce. There’s sadness in Elliot’s life, and he’s lonely, which is why he forms such a bond with E.T., but there’s so much more to it, isn’t there? There’s happiness and discovery and wonder and joy. Whereas “Where the Wild Things Are” seems to suggest that sadness is almost all there is.

So the Wild Things. They look great. But they truly are a mopey bunch, and when one of them asks Max if, as their king, he will promise to “keep the sadness out,” I wanted to put my head in my hands. Or at least cover my ears. The scenes with the Wild Things are filled with earnest psychobabble about how nobody can make everybody happy all of the time, and how it’s possible to be friends with more than one person, and what it feels like when nobody listens to you. All of this stuff reminded me of the sorts of themes I liked to explore in the poetry I wrote when I was 16.

Anyway, SPOILER ALERT! DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! eventually the Wild Things realizes that Max is not going to make them happy (“He’s just a boy,” one of them says) and Max acknowledges that, it’s true, he’s not really a king. Which really made me angry, because I thought “Where the Wild Things Are” was about the power of imagination, and creating a world where you can be king and run around with the Wild Things, and making Max apologize for misrepresenting himself seemed to violate the spirit of the book. In any case, I was happy when Max got back on his little sailboat and returned home.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is much better than some other recent adaptations of beloved children’s books — “Jumanji” and “The Cat and the Hat” come immediately to mind — but maybe it was just never meant to be a feature length film. I remember thinking that the trailer was brilliant, a tantalizing mix of sound and images and action. But the film feels thin. And it gives the Wild Things too much screen time.

WAIT ... ARE THESE FILMS REALLY FOR KIDS?

I’m not sure kids will like “Where the Wild Things Are,” but that’s OK. There are a lot of films that are marketed for kids, but really intended for adults.

1. “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” I didn’t see this until I was in college, but I’ve been told that Gene Wilder’s performance scares lots of kids.

2. “Babe: Pig in the City” “Babe” is such a sweet movie. The sequel, “Babe: Pig in the City,” is a nightmarish fantasy more reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” than “Babe.” Farmer Hoggett’s wife is even subjected to a cavity search at the airport.

3. “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T” A musical-fantasy from 1953 written by Dr. Seuss, this film features some wildly inventive sets designed by Dr. Seuss. The plot concerns a young boy named Bart who hates taking piano lessons, and dreams up a fantasy world where he and 499 other enslaved boys are forced to play a giant piano. (On Greencine, there’s an essay comparing “Where the Wild Things Are” to “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T”; click here to read it.)

4. “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” Was Pee-Wee Herman ever really intended for kids? I mean, what a strange phenomenon.

5. “Labyrinth” I loved this 1986 film about a teenage girl (Jennifer Connelly) who must travel through a dangerous maze to rescue her little brother from the goblin king (David Bowie). I’d like to see it again, but friends who recently re-watched it advised me to “keep it as a happy childhood memory.” I don’t know how happy a memory it is. A friend of mine had to turn it off at her birthday party because she was terrified of the goblin king. But it does feature a great set inspired by an M.C. Escher painting, which makes me wonder ... why aren’t there more films with sets inspired by the works of M.C. Escher?

6. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” I include this because I haven’t seen “Coraline” yet. Great animation, and great music.

7. “Fairy Tale: A True Story” This sounds like a cute film about fairies, right? It’s actually about the two girls who claimed they saw fairies in their garden; soon after, Arthur Conan Doyle arrived to investigate the veracity of their tale. Based on, yes, a true story.

8. “Fantasia” This might just be my favorite Disney movie. But it’s definitely not for kids. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is great and all, but it’s kind of scary when Mickey Mouse can’t control the walking brooms. Still, the sequence inspired me and my friend Jon to carve slits into a broomstick, so we could string wire through it and make it dance from behind a curtain as part of the haunted house we were designing in his basement when we were middle school. The project ended when Jon sliced his thumb and had to go to the emergency room.

9. “Strings” I wrote about this all-marionette film a few weeks ago. It concerns the death of a king, and his son’s quest to avenge his death. Netflix calls it a children’s film, but I’m not sure any film that opens with a tragic suicide is really for children. But, hey, maybe that’s just me.

10. “The Triplets of Belleville” A French musical-cartoon about a boy whose grandmother trains him to compete in the Tour de France. When he’s kidnapped during the race, she sets out to save him. There’s no dialogue, and the film is endlessly weird. But I loved it.

Got a comment? E-mail me at sfoss@dailygazette.net.