IFDB Review: Where The Wild Things Are: The Wild Rumpus Edition:

My review is based on the blu-ray version of the fanedit. Technically, it was brilliant. There wasn't a single cut audio or visual that indicated this was a fanedit. I was really surprised by this. Removing and replacing music, that can be a really difficult task, but had I not seen the original, I would not have known this was a fanedit. I really liked all the music choices too (well, one exception mentioned below) Narrative was mostly fantastic. I did not care for the original. In the original the kid was annoying and bratty and that's not how I like my main characters to be. Cutting all of his unlikeable scenes actually made him tolerable in this version. I didn't really get the ending at first though. It was so fast, all of a sudden the movie was over and I was left with "wait, what just happened, how's it over" I had to rewind it to watch again because it really comes up on you. If you look away for 5 seconds, literally you miss the whole thing. After rewatching though, it's actually much darker than I noticed naturally. I think this was one area where the music didn't really work. It sounded like a happy ending, but upon rewinding and rewatching the last 30 seconds, I was like "wait a minute, that's not happy at all, this is actually a really dark ending." The implications of that last interaction with his mom and the camera zoom on his outfit really is a much darker ending than the music and title screen seemed to indicate. I highly recommend this edit. I especially would recommend this edit to be shown to others as an introduction to fanedits. I suspect that everyone who has seen the original will like this version better and anyone who hasn't seen the original would never even realize this wasn't original - and when told, they'd have no interest in going back. Enjoyment: 9 (original 4)

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