Category: edward norton

The tale of 12-year-old sweethearts on the run is delightfully light and filled with the director's iconoclasm and quirks.

“Moonrise Kingdom” is Wes Anderson’s seventh feature film, and in some ways it’s typical of all of them, with tropes and tics and themes and actors familiar from the likes of “Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” and the rest.  (Indeed, so strong is Anderson’s artistic stamp that it even permeated 2009’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a stop-motion animated movie based on a Roald Dahl novel.)

And yet, there’s a freshness and vitality to “Moonrise” that was absent from Anderson’s two previous live-action films, “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “The Darjeeling Limited,” in which the writer-director trod his wonted territory with heavy -- and heavily mannered -- feet.

Yes, “Moonrise” gives us the predictable feckless fathers and decent-hearted surrogate dads, the precocious kids spouting archaic lingo, the old-timey technology, French pop music, symmetrical visuals, young adult fantasy books, amateur theatricals, pup tents, suitcases, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and an awkward, ardent romance:  the stock ingredients of the Andersonian stew.  And yet somehow there’s a zest and lightness that had been missing of late.  The film feels more spry and unencumbered and inspired than Anderson’s recent work (the delightful “Mr. Fox” excluded).  It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s charming.

Set in 1965 (with a few flashbacks to the previous year), “Moonrise” centers on the romance of two 12-year-olds, Sam Shakusky (debuting actor Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, another newcomer).  Sam has fled his Khaki Scout summer camp and Suzy the stifling home of her lawyer parents (Frances McDormand and Murray) to live together in the wilds of (the fictional) New Penzance Island, sustaining themselves on his outdoorsmanship and her sense of culture.  

Naturally, the adults (including scoutmaster Edward Norton and local cop Bruce Willis) are in eager pursuit, as are the other Khaki Scouts, who pretty much loathe Sam, and a Social Services operative (Tilda Swinton) who means to send the orphaned Sam to an institution.  And with a famous (and also fictional) storm ominously en route, it all takes on an especially freighted air.

The craft is at the high level we always get from Anderson, who is working with some of his usual creative team.  But you can’t help but feel that it’s the young actors -- the lumpy but sober Gilman, with his coonskin hat and pipe, the svelte and cool Hayward, with her eye shadow and Francoise Hardy records -- who have helped the director find his artistic fountain of youth.  As often, Anderson has trouble sticking the landing, but “Moonrise Kingdom” is in many ways the most satisfying flight he’s taken us on in years.    
    
(94 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B-plus