I Really Liked Moonrise Kingdom

If you’re anything like me, you’ve developed this habit of watching every movie with an overly critical lens. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the movies, or even that I’m necessarily pickier than the average movie fan, but I do have the tendency to get a little too academic in my movie-viewing. Thus far this year, watching films has been far too much about mental stimulation and not nearly enough about visceral stimulation. I would hypothesize that this is partly due to my natural propensity to critique, and partly due to being under the influence of society’s increasing desire to be a hater. That’s why I needed this movie.

Moonrise Kingdom (or ‘The Adventures of Sally and Glen’ as Madmen fans will call it), is a love story about a couple of troubled 12-year olds who just don’t care about anything else. It’s set in New Penzance, an island outside of Maine in 1965, which serves as both a perfect location for the plot and the perfect excuse to showcase a large cast with ONLY white people. The film is written and directed by Wes Anderson, and if you know Anderson’s films (I don’t, but people tell me), you knew beforehand to expect some weirdness. Sure enough, the movie opens with a creepy looking guy warning the audience about a future storm, followed by a visual introduction to an imminently dysfunctional family and and a first-person tour of the lighthouse they live in (whew!). This scene culminates with a young girl looking out of the top window through binoculars.

These people are just as fun as they look

We soon learn that this girl is the female lead, Suzy Bishop. Her counterpart is orphaned khaki scout Sam Shakusky. The two met a year prior when Sam saw her playing a raven in some church play. This is where it gets good. During the subsequent year the two communicate as pen pals, and ultimately develop a plan to run away together. The progression of Sam and Suzy’s relationship is so disarmingly pure that within minutes I lost pretty much all self awareness and immersed myself into this semi-surreal world. Accompanying our middle schoolers in their story are a host of well-constructed characters who successfully straddle the line between goofy and frighteningly honest. A few stick out in particular. Hapless Khaki Scout Master Ward (played by Edward Norton) and also hapless Police Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis) struggle to keep tabs on their respective zany responsibilities and derive meaning from their mundane lives. The most entertaining role player is actually an entity consisting of about 10 characters: Sam’s khaki scout troop. Honestly, they are mostly just exactly how you’d imagine a group of 12-year old boy scouts who take themselves too seriously, but try to visualize that in your head for a second and I think you’ll at least smile. Most importantly, their presence is the heart of the environment created by Wes Anderson.

Suzy kinda looks like Emma Watson. Sam is probably destined for nerd roles in teen comedies for the next 30 years.

Don’t get it twisted though, as interesting as the qualms of other characters are, this movie is about Sam Shakusky and Suzy Bishop. For one, the performances by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, respectively, are pretty fantastic. As quirky as the movie is, our lovers are actually characterized as somewhat dark. Sam is unpopular and parentless, and Suzy is a deeply emotionally disturbed product of a broken household. There are not many smiles to be had between them. But that’s the beauty of it. There is never a doubt that the two feel strongly for each other and their mostly stoic demeanors actually serve to remind us what it is that connects them. Most of what makes good romance is a connection we can believe in, and being a perpetually shit on 12-year old is one of the more relatable points of intersection I can think of. Still, this is a pretty ambitious request of child actors, and I was genuinely amazed at the execution.

Of course, they were aided by some pretty great dialogue. It’s hard to recall a movie with fewer wasted words. Nearly every line was either funny, clever, poignant, or some combination of the three. The majority of the characters had me dying to know what they were going to say next. Sam and Suzy in particular offered a beautiful mix of kids saying the darndest things, pre-teen insightfulness, and character-defining morbidity.

Overall this was a particularly sensational mainly because it got me to lean into the screen and say “who cares?” to the little voice in my head telling me how silly it all was. I have no interest in arguing plot holes, character development, and scene relevance, because honestly I didn’t notice any of that stuff. I can definitely see someone not liking the film, but I think it’s pretty easy to enjoy. We’ve all seen love stories, and we’ve probably all seen juvenile love stories, the nuance is in the presentation. While the presentation is by no means complex, it is profound in that it reminds us why we like this shit in the first place. Favorite movie of the year.