It's Adult, It's Sophisticated... and It's Aimed at Kids

Think (500) Days of Summer is the ultimate movie aimed at hipster twentysomethings this year? Think again: Your typical Whole Foods shopper is much more likely to be counting down the days to Where the Wild Things Are or The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and they've got no plans to drag a niece or nephew along with them. How did children's movies get to this point?

The auteurs behind both movies have a lot in common: Both Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson released their most pivotal early film in 1999 (Being John Malkovich and Rushmore, respectively) and until this year had worked only in the R-rated realm. Neither has dumbed down his sensibility for this genre, either -- in fact, Wild Things was held up for an interminable amount of time as studio executives fretted it was too dark and adult for a children's film. Though a campaign aimed at kids will most likely start closer to its release date, all the early Wild Things marketing has been aimed at savvy adults: limited-edition skateboards, a culture blog, a trailer scored to the Arcade Fire.

On its face, Mr. Fox appears to be the more typical children's film -- after all, it's got cute, talking critters voiced by megastars like George Clooney and Meryl Streep. Still, it's just as particular and specific as any of Anderson's live-action films; instead of employing computer animation, Anderson used painstaking stop-motion, and its tiny tableaus are as covered in sophisticated details as a Royal Tenenbaums bedroom. As for its plot? "Mr. Fox is having a midlife crisis," producer Allison Abbate told USA Today. "He wants better real estate." I think they were going to use that storyline in one of the Shrek sequels, but it didn't allow for enough American Idol parodies.

Are we seeing a resurgence of children's films that don't feel the need to talk down to their audience (and don't feel the best way to lure parents is with increasingly dated pop cultural references)? Certainly, Pixar's artistically ambitious one-two punch of Wall-E and Up helped pave the way for that trend. Analysts derided Up as not sufficiently kid-friendly, then watched it become Pixar's highest grosser since Finding Nemo.

Both Up and Nemo open with unexpectedly grim prologues that kill off a major character -- but then, animated classics like Bambi used to be positively laced with dark asides like that. Perhaps the question isn't "Can children today handle kids' movies that are a little more adult?" but instead, "Didn't we?"

· First look: 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' is not for children only [USA Today]