Moonrise Kingdom Movie Review

Moonrise Kingdom Movie Review

Picture 1: Sketchy cast photo for Moonrise Kingdom (sorry).

Moonrise Kingdom is Wes Anderson's latest feature starring newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward.  Fans of Wes Anderson films are familiar with his recurring cast of preferred actors such as Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwatrzman, and more. In Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson casted two young actors as the main characters who somehow perfectly pull off the ironic/dry/funny delivery of everything they say.

Moonrise Kingdom is a story about young love and how awkward and amazing it can be.  Sam (Gilman) and Suzy (Hayward) own that sort of young wisdom we all seem to lose along the way for concern over perfecting the small steps of love. Sam and Suzy are able to discover young love while providing some laughs and driving a plot which tangles up some excellent background character rolls from Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand. Don't blink because you might miss Jason Schwartzman, too. Also, there's the guy on the top left of Picture 1 -- he was the man for some reason, but I can't put my finger on why.

I'd really rather not review the plot and try to dance around spoilers so I'll just share the following photo:

Picture 2: Little man's got the moves.

My girlfriend after the movie described the pair in Picture 2 dancing like she and I would. She would be "rocking back and forth looking all 'cool'" and you would be "rocking out and not caring how you looked" (or something like that, I'm paraphrasing).  Well, I don't know if she really knows what cool dancing looks like, but anyways this scene was really fun and it leads to my following review:

I HIGHLY recommend this film. It's interesting, funny, original (or as original as any Wes Anderson film can when compared to the others). So, steal your little brother's record player, leave a run-away note, pack a suitcase of storybooks and go see this movie!