Monday, July 9, 2012

Movie Review - Moonrise Kingdom

If you're looking for a movie that is nothing like Spiderman or Batman or any of the big summer blockbusters, you should check this out.

Here is IMDB.com's capsule description "A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out and find them." This hardly does justice to this marvelous little film.

The "young lovers" in question are right in the center of the poster. 12-year-old Sam is a Khaki Scout (think of Boy Scouts) on a long summer camp-out with Troop 55. He's an unhappy, misfit orphan who nobody likes. Suzy, is a 12-year-old girl, bored with her family life and yearning for adventure. The camp and her home are located on an island off the coast of New England somewhere. The whole story takes place in 3-4 days in September 1965 as a hurricane descends on the island. Sam runs off from camp, Suzy runs away from home and they meet in the woods. He gets a friend, she gets adventure. Everyone else runs around looking for them. Then the storm breaks.

The story is improbable, sweet, funny and mystical.  And it has a wonderful cast. The kids playing Sam and Suzy are great. The adults are an all-star cast consisting of Bill Murray and Francis McDormand as Suzy's parents, Bruce Willis as the island policeman, Edward Norton as the bumbling scoutmaster and Harvey Keitel as the Scoutmaster General.

The movie was directed by Wes Anderson who has done such quirky movies as Mt. Rushmore, The Royal Tenebaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Life Aquatic. If you liked any of these films you're like this. If you're unfamiliar with these other films go see this anyway and they watch the others.

1 comment:

Commishbob said...

Hard to go wrong with a Bill Murray movie. He's always worth the price of the ticket.