Moonrise Kingdom

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source: Moonrise Kingdom

There's no live-action director whose movies are more like animated films than Wes Anderson. It's quite fitting that he ventured into stop- motion with "The Fantastic Mr. Fox", because the line between that and his live work is thinner than it seems. And never has that been more true than with his new effort, "Moonrise Kingdom". Without a doubt, this movie has struck a nerve - in it's limited-release opening weekend, it broke the all-time record for per-screen average at the box office (albeit on only five screens). Even now it's only on 16 screens, but averaged a massive $54,000 per screen. By any measure, this film is a hit. I loved Anderson's breakthrough film "Rushmore", but I've been somewhat indifferent to most of what he's done since. "Moonrise" is very successful at delivering what Wes Anderson delivers - an absurd, surreal experience - a little precious, maybe - but often quite funny and always interesting to look at. If he's your cup of tea, I think you'll like this one - it might be his strongest movie since "Rushmore".Moonrise-Kingdom-007 Briefly, it's the story of 12 year-old "Khaki Scout" Sam (Jared Gilman) an orphan in New England in 1965, an "emotionally disturbed" kid whose foster parents have decided "not to invite him back". At a church performance of Benjamin Britten's "Noah's Flood" he meets 12 year-old Suzy (Kara Hayward), likewise troubled - estranged from her parents (Bill Murray, Frances McDormand) and sporting a violent streak, she lived for her binoculars, kitten and stolen library books. She and Sam hatch a plan to run away together as a hurricane bears down on tiny New Penzance Island, where she lives and his scout troop is holding their summer jamboree. This sets the town in a desperate search for them, including the affable police chief (Bruce Willis) and the well-meaning scoutmaster (Edward Norton). You should know what to expect here - lots of self-conscious Anderson charm and interesting visual tricks. The movie is a kind of moving storybook, with lots of 360 pans, narrow-field shots as if seen through Suzy's binoculars, and pastel lighting. As all Anderson's films are, it's a love letter to childhood and to social misfits. The adults are mostly well-meaning but hopelessly lost in relating to the kids. Childhood isn't romanticized so much as fetishized - Sam and Suzy are hilariously frank with each other, including on the subject of sex ("It feels hard." "Does it bother you?") and Sam's fellow scouts can be cruel, but also hold a reserve of "Us vs. Them" loyalty. Authority is despised (the social services lady refers to herself as "Social Services") and only interested in destroying Sam's uniqueness and forcing him to conform. Obviously, Anderson isn't going for reality any more than The Brothers Grimm were - but he is trying to shed some light on childhood using fantastical means. And he largely succeeds, thanks in part to Gilman and Hayward's straightforward charm. I suspect that many of the folks paying to see this movie don't realize that they're the ones Anderson is making fun of, but that's part of the fun in watching an Anderson film. Bruno Wang says: This is escapist entertainment, and how much you care to read meaning into it is entirely up to you.

I just can't fathom why this movie is getting such good reviews. Most likely the first and last Wes Anderson movie I'm seeing. There's nothing genuine or charming in this film. There's just this forced intentional quirkiness to this film that I can't stand. It just tries too hard to be quirky and cute and ends up feeling pretentious. The line between quirky and annoying can be very thin indeed and for me this movie crossed it by a mile. The film is partly categorized as a comedy but I didn't even get a slight chuckle during the entire film. Was I supposed to? Everything's delivered deadpan and I didn't buy the dialogue between Sam and Suzy at all. Deadpan humor is good and all but you can't have everyone doing it for the whole movie. Also, I didn't like this whole idea of kids delivering adult dialogue and ended up disliking the protagonists a lot. They didn't feel like kids in the slightest so how is this whole first love between kids angle going to work here then? They're just flat and emotionally detached. All of the characters are essentially missing a human core. I also didn't buy the love story between Sam and Suzy and that makes everything else pointless. I'm supposed to think they're in love but it didn't even seem like they liked each other. Didn't care for the rest of the characters either despite there being some serious talent behind them. If there had been at least one or two there who I liked somewhat I wouldn't give this one star. Visually it was kind of interesting but without a good story and characters, what does it matter?

So let's get some quirky actors - Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, etc. - and put them in a quirky situation with boy scouts on a small island and then have a quirky narrator kind of tell us what's going to happen even though narrators usually tell us what did happen. Wouldn't that be totally quirky! In the quirkly named "Moonrise Kingdom" Wes Anderson tries to pull the "New Girl" television show's audience out of cute apartments and out to the flicks. There they find that the film presents some interesting dialog and plot turns as well as some decent performances particularly by the child actors. However, these charms are wrapped in circumstances somewhat over- engineered to be offbeat. The feeling of being manipulated limits the audience from fully enjoying the film although given the story can't fully sustain interest over its full length limits how much there is to enjoy. Also limiting the enjoyment are some highly uncomfortable scenes involving a twelve year old character being felt up in her underwear. People who find this discomforting (and everyone should feel uncomfortable with it) should avoid the film. In short, if M. Night Shayamalan didn't exist, Anderson would have an argument for being rated modern U.S. cinema's most overrated director.

I hated 'Bottle Rocket', hated 'Rushmore', hated 'The Royal Tennenbaums'. Surprise! I hated Moonrise Kingdom. Why do I keep watching Wes Anderson's movies? Because I keep hearing/reading all this great stuff about 'em. Bottle Rocket was the highly touted first Anderson film, so I watched that. I didn't get it. Rushmore got all these great reviews, and I didn't connect that it was made by the same guy that made Bottle Rocket, so that time I got tricked. Stinko. The praise for The Royal Tennenbaums was so over the top that I thought there must be something wrong with me for hating the two previous films, so I watched it and wanted to kill myself by the halfway point. I successfully avoided his next few films and then I got tricked again 'cause I didn't know Moonrise Kingdom was a Wes Anderson movie until the FIRST TWO MINUTES when it was unmistakable. "OH NO, NOT AGAIN" I thought. I don't understand why anyone likes this boring crap with 'quirky' dialog delivered in a monotone, long shots of nothing (someone's front yard with no one in the frame for a full minute, for example) and plots and situations with no basis in reality (but not in a good way). Of course, I despised 'Lost In Translation' and 'Safety Not Guaranteed' too. But I am an un-hip philistine and clearly I'll never develop the cultural palate to appreciate Wes Anderson's 'craft'. Watching this movie is torture. If you want to be entertained, avoid it like the plague. No more Wes Anderson for me. Ever again.

This film is wonderfully shot, and the use of color is intriguing. However there is a distinct lack of substance and likable characters. Seriously Coulda used a dose of Owen Wilson...Everyone Except the 2 main characters and Edward Norton are just agonizing to watch. And I like Murray, Willis, Swinton, AND McDormand, a lot. Murray was just not good, and the others lackluster, although Tilda Swinton was more or less her usual self. The dialogue was at times amusing but the direction was lacking. There is a whole lot of droll monotone soliloquies and quirkiness just for the sake of quirkiness. You knew what was going to happen and yet it took forever and a day to unfold. It's like Wes Anderson took the worst parts of Tenenbaums, Darjeeling, and Fantastic Mr. Fox and decided they were the best, and deserved their own movie. In a word, boring. In a sentence, wait for rental or skip entirely.