Comic actor Catherine O'Hara voices Judith, one of the creatures in the Spike Jonze version of Where the Wild Things Are.

LOS ANGELES -- Mr. Dressup, Big Bird -- and Bubbles?

According to Catherine O'Hara, there's a lot children could learn from the Trailer Park Boys.

"They're so foul-mouthed, but they're the best lesson in, 'You don't want to be those guys.' Why would you keep your kids away from that when you can see (that) pathetic people swear?" says O'Hara, who has two sons.

"I think Barney's way more pornographic because it uses stock music, there's nothing original about it --it's scary. The children are like little robots."

The subject of what's permissible for children is apropos since the Canadian-born actress voices negative, neurotic Judith, one of the titular creatures in director Spike Jonze's dark but resonant Where the Wild Things Are, which opens Friday.

"To come back and analyze it is just bulls---," she says of her role. "It's always bulls--- when I analyze what I do, but it especially is in this case. The job was really just trying to be a kid and to let go what you normally do as an actor and not go in prepared and not come in with any ideas and just go to the next moment and be in the moment."

O'Hara, a comic veteran whose career has ranged from SCTV to such Tim Burton films as Beetlejuice, has enjoyed a resurgence in the past decade, thanks to her work in such Christopher Guest mockumentaries as For Your Consideration, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show.

"It makes you cool by association, like (Where the Wild Things Are) does," she says. "I came from a big family and I didn't care what anyone else thought, but it was cool coming from a big family."

Is there another Guest comedy in her future? "I hope so, but I don't know."

In the meantime, along with Where the Wild Things Are, she was most recently seen on Larry David's HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm as an oversexed mental patient who wreaks havoc at a dinner party.

"It was a long day of improvising. You don't know how it's going to turn out. I'm grateful I'm in it at all. You improvise a lot and they use it however they want. But because I was playing someone who was insane anyway, they used stuff so out of context, it made it that much more ridiculous."