Movie Review - Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Starring Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, and Jason Schwartzman

Directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson is a director whose films often feature style trumping substance.  When he succeeds at finding a perfect balance, the result is one of the best movies of the new century.  When he disappoints, at least he always lets us down in an interesting way with a wonderful visual flair.  Moonrise Kingdom falls a bit in the middle of those two spectrums.  His trademark quirkiness is omnipresent in his typical storybook world he has created here, in this case the island town of New Penzance in New England circa 1965.  With beautiful color blocking and visually impressive camera work, Moonrise Kingdom never fails to be a lovely film to gaze upon.  Storywise, however, there's just not a whole lot upon which to heap praises.  It's all a bit too simplistic, feeling even a bit more unnecessarily padded than its short 96-minute runtime would have you believe.

When the film opens, twelve year-old Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) has run away from his Khaki Scout summer camp.  As Scout Master Randy Ward (Edward Norton) frantically rallies his troop members into a search party, across the island young Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) has also run away from home, leaving her parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray) worried about her whereabouts.  It turns out that the two tweens have met up with one another to rekindle a budding puppy love romance that began a short time ago.  They plan on running away together and spending a lifetime with one another letting no one in town stop them from their entwined destinies.

That's Moonrise Kingdom in a nutshell and, quite honestly, not much else of importance happens.  There are some quirky side stories that fail to add much to the overarching tale and, as mentioned previously, the main story just doesn't have enough to sustain itself.  Sure, the whole thing is cute as could be, but that doesn't necessarily always cut it.  Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are nice together as the young couple, but (and this always sounds harsh when critiquing younger actors) it took me quite a while to be won over by their mannered and wooden performances.  Ultimately, I think their director wanted their roles to be exactly as they have played them, but they aren't exactly emotionally riveting, falling instead on the side of bland as opposed to interesting.  The rest of the cast is fine, but with the exception of Mr. Norton's whimsical Scoutmaster, they really aren't given a whole lot to do.  None of the characters have a bit of depth (or at least any depth that proves meaningful) and that is a bit of a disappointment.

Ultimately, Moonrise Kingdom is an enjoyable diversion, but beyond the visuals (which, once again, I find beautiful and make the film certainly worth watching), this proves to be a film that I likely never need to see again sheerly because of the throwaway nature of the whole thing.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

(I realize that the above review sounds overly harsh for a 'B-' rating, but the visual style of the flick carried a lot of weight here.  And the plain and simple truth is that the story just didn't have enough oomph to warrant a higher rating.)