Review: Moonrise Kingdom

Being an outsider can sometimes be a difficult thing to deal with in life. You may not have as many friends, you may feel lonely, and there is a chance that you will miss out on normal forms of human contact. One of the positives of being an outcast is that you don’t always have to feel lonely and isolated. Eventually, you will find some people who can respect, understand, and appreciate it for what it is. That’s the case with the two outcast tweens in Moonrise Kingdom. They meet, fall in love, and develop a strong bond with each other.

Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) are two isolated twelve-year-olds who find comfort in each other and fall in love with their common bond. While residing on a small island off the coast of New England, the two boys decide to run away from their problems and be together. Once everyone from parents to social workers to Khaki Scout troop leaders finds out what’s going on, everyone steps in to catch the runaways and stop whatever plans they have. So much easier said than done, because these determined lovebirds will go out of their way to live their dreams together.

Moonrise Kingdom starts off well with its opening scene that gives us a quick look at what’s going on at the home of Suzy Bishop and her family. As we continue to go around and get a bigger picture of everything that is happening on this island in 1965. During this time, we see attractive scenery and are introduced to some strange looking characters to accompany a slightly strange story about children in love. It didn’t take long for me to realize that these things would be the most important part of the movie. Based on the way this is presented, you know the rest of the movie will probably be on the quirky side of things.

From a purely visual perspective, the characters and the environment around them are there to tell the story. We see that through things like his facial expressions, some of his hairstyles, the various weapon options at his disposal, and through the many beautiful shots of nature. That’s fine up to a point, but the characters in this movie are too bland for my liking. While they have personality from a visual point of view, they lack real personality from an emotional point of view.

Almost all of these characters in Moonrise Kingdom are stiff and emotionless and that doesn’t work for me at all. They don’t act like people you would normally meet in everyday life in any way, shape, or form. That is especially true for children, who act too old for their age and do not seem interested in living life as a child normally does. Personally I prefer movies where people have more emotion and personality. The lack of personality here hampered my ability to like this as much as it might have under normal circumstances.

I didn’t feel anything for these characters and Wes Anderson’s style didn’t really give me enough space to do so. Usually when I have a movie in front of me about marginalized children and trying to figure out who they are and what they want, I can support them as they search for their happy ending. However, in Moonrise Kingdom, I just couldn’t do that. How can I support children without personality? To me, it seems like Sam and Suzy don’t really care about anything they are doing and are a pair of borderline sociopathic kids who just repeat what they’ve seen adults do. They, like most of the cast of characters, have no personality to speak of.

The top two characters don’t come from either actor with lead roles. These two characters are played by Tilda Swinton and Bob Balaban. Swinton is the social worker and has one of the few characters who seems to resemble a real human being to some degree. Along with maybe a couple of others, he had some excitement up his sleeve, so to speak. Almost everyone else used it subtly on their faces, but that’s about it. It’s a shame they didn’t give him more time in front of the camera, because he’s more visible than anyone else in Moonrise Kingdom.

Balaban has the second best character as a storyteller and is a bright spot from the start. His problems crop up as time goes by and he quickly fades and becomes increasingly dark and less and less insightful and entertaining. That’s because his scenes don’t change much and his Stepford wives, like trends, start to show just as much as everyone else’s the longer he stays in front of the camera.

Moonrise Kingdom feels like it was created by a smart kid who isn’t mature enough to build a movie about people with legitimate complexities that includes some adult theme. I don’t think any movie should solely rely on its looks and a potentially decent story to carry it around. That’s essentially what happens here with characters who lack real depth and human qualities for the most part. I have seen almost all of these established actors perform strong and excellent performances in their careers and I don’t understand why they weren’t allowed to have more life than they show.

It seems that Anderson wanted the emotion and temperament of Moonrise Kingdom to show through only through the visual aspects of the film. In my opinion, it focused so much on the film’s superficial artwork that it left the characters completely empty and with nothing noteworthy. While the cinematography and music in this movie are positive for me, having sterile characters took away most of the enjoyment that I thought there might be in the movie. Moonrise Kingdom is like a beautiful woman who tries to attract men solely because of her looks. It may work for a while, but for some of us, you will have to have some positive inner qualities to complement your outer beauty. It’s never good for someone to be a beautiful idiot.

For the record, it also made me uncomfortable to see two half-naked boys kissing. That was not right.

Score: 2.5 / 5

Rating: PG-13

Director: Wes Anderson

To emit:

Jared gilman

Kara hayward

Bruce Willis

Bill murray

Edward Norton

Frances mcdormand

Tilda swinton

Harvey Keitel

Bob Balaban

Length of the film: 94 minutes

Release Date: May 25, 2012

Distributor: Focus Features