Wes Anderson gets flack sometimes for a perceived superficiality in his films, and fair enough—his ornate style cultivates a carefully manicured aesthetic with obsessive consideration paid to every minute detail, right down to the color-coded characters and the wallpapered backgrounds that frame them. But Anderson's always found a way to transcend those limitations, balancing the scales of his style, so to speak, by counterweighting his exacting compositions with an understated humanism. Those scales finally tipped, however, with his last feature, the stop-motion "Fantastic Mr. Fox." As it turns out, lose the actual humans in a Wes picture and so too goes the humanism. "Moonrise Kingdom," then, returns Anderson to flesh and feeling, to the emotional stakes and some of the patience of sprawling, 'less perfect' films like "The Royal Tenenbaums" and, my personal favorite, "The Darjeeling Limited."

“Moonrise Kingdom” is set during the summer of 1965, on the fictional New Panzance Island, and it concerns a romantic tryst between two sullen twelve-year-old runaways in the days leading up to a cataclysmic, deus ex machina. Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) is a boy scout bedazzled in merit badges; his sad-eyed paramour, Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), is a borderline depressive who sometimes resembles Emma Roberts and Lana Del Rey (she even shares the latter's affection for weepy chansons). As the two indulge in each other's company, sharing all their favorite hobbies—she reading fantasy novels, he painting watercolors ("mostly landscapes, and some nudes")—a search party mobilizes to force their immediate return. Interested parties in this venture range from Captain Sharpe (Bruce Willis), the Island's lone, lonely law enforcer; Suzy's quarreling parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand); Sam's skittish Scout Master (Edward Norton); and a cabal of Camp Ivanhoe's most precocious preteens, all distinguishable by their eye-patches, dog side-kicks, and other assorted quirks.

What this extensive ensemble comes to represent, however, is a kind of family. The intricacies of the family bond have become the definitive theme of Anderson's work, and their nuances supply the gravity his best films boast. 'Moonrise,' for instance, seems at first blush to be Anderson's lightest confection yet, all puppy-love and innocent wilderness adventuring. But the film toes darker waters too, delving into the prickly details of a crumbling marriage and the painful trials and traumas of childhood (a soulful ache well captured by Anderson's soundtrack man Randall Poster, whose curated a trio of Hank Williams's finest wallowers). Like 'Fox' before it, "Moonrise Kingdom’s" airtight pacing and structure don’t allow for much downtime, which will likely appease those who thought 'Darjeeling' meandered too much. To me, the taut tempo isn't always a virtue, but at least it never induces whiplash quite like 'Fox' did, and it was probably the right way to approach this sweet, modest coming-of-age story.

Review by:
Sam C. Mac