Review of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Ryan S — 19 Sep 2016

I have very limited experience with Wes Anderson, but if Moonrise Kingdom is indicative of the majority of his work then it might not be for me. There is one aspect of Anderson's film-making that I greatly respect and can easily get behind, though.

I love the meticulous way he captures his own visual style. The perfect framing of scenes in rooms built specifically for appearing on camera makes the movie look like a story book. You can tell that every little detail has been planned in order to give a colorful and pleasing shot every single time.

What I hate in this movie is that it takes place in some really odd alternate reality where people don't behave like normal human beings. Everything from the dialogue to the decisions made by characters is so strange that it's like I'm watching a bunch of aliens trying to reenact events they read about in our books.

The cast is mostly full of very talented actors, and some of them almost manage to appear normal in certain scenes. The big exceptions to the good casting are the 2 lead kids. Now I don't want to criticize the actors themselves, because I feel like this was a director's choice, but they are worse than robots.

It's as if Wes Anderson said "well, since kids are usually not the best actors, let's just steer into that skid" and he asked them to be completely emotionless in every line delivery.

That kind of undercuts the whole plot of the film since it's built on these 2 robots falling in love. Ordinarily I would probably like this story, and I certainly would like it with this visual style.

But because it is so weird and off-putting I was mildly annoyed by the whole thing and will be reluctant to see any more of Anderson's movies.