Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Wes Anderson proudly presents: Peter Pan: the untold story
I have to date watched three Wes Anderson films:
The Grand Budapest, Fantastic Mr. Fox and now
Moonrise Kingdom. I thought Budapest was very funny, one of Ralph Fiennes best comedic roles, and Fox was a childhood memory put to film (if with some wierd inserted midlife crisis feelings for Mr. Fox). Both, I think, are in serious need of a rewatch and a proper review. But let us discuss this latest film now, this story of a pair of kids on the run from their respective situations. Who plans to run away from their grown up guardians and find a new life for themselves.
I'm sorry, but am I the only one who gets
Peter Pan vibes from this? A orphan boy meets a young girl and together they run away from her parents to find their own little world to live in. They even get some lost boys for the Wendy character to read stories to. It dosen't work in the end (not the way they thought, at least) and the young girl goes back to her family.
It's probably just me, especially since these are the only similarities I thought of during the movie, but they lingered and I thought I could chuck them into the review and see if anyone else thought the same thing. Discussion and such. But now, on to the structure.
This was the most unusual of the three movies I've seen by Anderson, in so far as in this movie, everyone is wierd. The background characters in Budapest were more or less normal (with a few exception koff koff Norton koff koff). The guests of the hotel seemed like normal folk and in Mr. Fox we have a suburb of people who decided to dress in Furrie costumes. They are as near to normal as characters in a movie gets. They work, they have families, they buy food, they simply live...until Mr. Fox gets restless. In Moonrise, every one's some degree of abnormal. Suzy's mother comunicates with her children exclusivley through bullhorn, for **** sake. I'd say Bill Murray didn't give a flying **** throughout this movie, only I think you have to act your @ss of to seem that aloof/oblivious to things going on. And when he does engage, he has to work of his residual emotions on a random tree. With an axe...and a bottle of wine...topless.
The story as such was...not what I expected. It took a while for me even to understand what was happening. 10 minutes in and we still hadn't a firm grasp on who the leads was. We'd met one of them, but that wasn't made clear and wouldn't be for another while yet.
Still, I liked it. Sam and Suzy were funny, in a deadpan kind of way. Camp Master Ward (Norton) seemed to truly enjoy his situation and still took his job deadly serious, if somewhat incopetently. Suzy's parents were a bit flat as was Bruce Willis portrayal of the local police officer. And the troups sudden, out of nowhere heel-turn regarding Sam annoyed the crap out of me. Establish feelings of guilt first,
then you can succumb to them.
Overall though, the movie was funny and somthing I could watch again.