That age-old adage, "Audiences hate uncute monsters"

As Hillary Clinton would say, the blogs were going crazy this weekend with buzz on a possible clip from next year's Spike Jonze-directed, Dave Eggers-scripted, Karen O-composed Where the Wild Things Are...was it fake? Was it leaked? Rotten Tomatoes has the scoop for us: the video is a test scene, shot for the purposes of planning the special effects still to be done.

A first taste of what's to come, the clip is basically awesome as is. For what Jonze calls a "cringy" monster suit, the thing is pretty great looking (how glad am I that Jim Henson's Creature Shop is handling this, and it's not some Dreamworks CGI affair?). Good to know they've made plenty of improvements since then, but that little bit feels like both a hip Spike Jonze movie, and one that should satisfy the book's fans of all ages - which is the ideal scenario.

Sadly, the movie that's just seemed too cool for a major studio to greenlight may have been exactly that: reports have been rolling in that Warners, originally scheduled to release Wild Things this fall, not only pushed back the date (possibly due to screening reactions of it being too scary or grown-up for kids...sounds perfect to me), it may be entirely reshot (!).

But what were they expecting when they hired the team they did? WB surely was aware of the intended tone. Of course, we don't know the full story, and maybe some serious tweaking really is in order. Here's hoping the picture can go through some "general audience" touch-ups and still live up to its potential as something very special.