Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom, 2012
Directed by Wes Anderson

Again, it's been a while since I've posted! I watched this movie twice last week but was thrown up from writing this review until now because I got engaged over the weekend! Woohoo! I'd say thats a pretty legit excuse not to write up a review right away! Anyway, here is the review for Moonrise Kingdom!

Moonrise Kingdom is the story of a young girl and a young boy who fall in love and, hating the lives they have at home (or at khaki scouts in Sam's case), run away together, and the small island town scrambles to try and find them, throwing everything topsy-turvy.

Moonrise Kingdom is a quirk of a movie. While I had heard of it before, most of what I knew was that all the hipsters on their blogs and tumblr dressed up as Sam and Suzy for Halloween. And that all the gifs on tumblr told me was that Sam says "I love you but you don't know what you're talking about" to Suzy. And something about them being "married".

Overall, I was expecting something extremely quirky and hipster. Which is more or less what I got.

However, I found the movie extremely endearing, and extraordinarily cute. Sam Shakusky is an adorable little boy, Suzy such a pretty girl. Scout Master Ward was hilarious, and Bruce Willis's character was so un-Bruce Willis. Yes, the movie was highly quirky and weird, but it was my kind of humour and stuff I really appreciate. Dopey kind of humor.

This movie was also quite well acted. The boy playing Sam Shakusky was really great. And of course with the star-studded adult cast, you can't go wrong.

And what I appreciate is that Wes Anderson gave the two young kids depth, and problems. Suzy is being thought of as "a very troubled child" by her parents, lashes out at kids at school, and hates her parents. Sometimes she steals library books to make her feel better. Sam's parents died a long time ago so he's been in and out with foster homes, but never really fitting in with anybody. The movie was not simply artificial and shallow, but most of the characters had problems and they had a bit of depth to them, which is what makes this movie so good.

Upon first watch of this, I wasn't a huge fan. I found it a little dull, and not quite what I was expecting (though I wasn't sure what to expect either). I picked up the movie a second time 2 days later and watched it with my mum, and found I enjoyed it a lot more, knowing what was coming and what to expect.

While Moonrise Kingdom is a charming film, I don't see the potential of Best Picture in it. If it were nominated I'd probably do a fist pump and laugh a lot cause such a quirky hipster movie that not everyone likes is up, but I just don't see that happening. It's biggest category will be in Original Screenplay, in which I think this has a good chance of not only being nominated, but I wouldn't be surprised if it won (though does have the strong competition of Django Unchained).

8/10