Have you noticed a trend in children movies lately, where traditional conceits such as "plot" and "dialogue" are thrown out in favor of a more art house approach? Sure, cinema for tots generally airs on the side of the absurd and fantastical, but just by examining how Disney moved from Snow White to the recent post-apocalyptic Chaplin recreation WALL·E you can see a trend that heavily favors nonlinear storytelling.

Now, with Dave Eggers/Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are taffy-pulling a 20-page book into a full-length film dealing with a child's existential crisis, the room for creative dalliances is balloons as producers realize "nonsensical" sells. With that in mind, Paramount's Nickelodeon Movies family label purchased the rights to an unnamed project based off the creatures sold in Kidrobot, the bicoastal hipster toy store:

The creatures come with no linear storyline, so the plan is to draft a writer for pen a story about ordinary kids who are transported into the edgy world populated by the Kidrobot creatures." [Movieweb]

Wait, "edgy" how? Because so far this sounds like the plot of Cool World, which confused parents in the 90s into thinking that cartoons+Brad Pitt=a family affair.

So who is the Kidrobot film, or WALL·E or Where the Wild Things Are marketed to, exactly? Certainly they are kid genre films, but ever since the Shrek phenomenon, where creators realized that with a series of well-placed in-jokes cartoons can be for adults again, the industry has been flowing with those tasty opening weekend dollars.

Not that anyone's complaining about smarter, hipper movies, even if the only genre taking this approach are kid flicks. Would it be so terrible to apply the same fun, rambling narratives to adult films? James Bond's Quantum Solace was never good with the dialogue, anyhow.