Moonrise Kingdom: Critic Reviews

Director Wes Anderson releases a quirky, almost storybook tale of adolescent love in a bygone era.

Anderson hasn't lost his puckishly charming genius for cinema-as-diorama visuals. Yet a lot happens in this film, and not a lot of it matters.

"Moonrise Kingdom" breezes along with a beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick.

A very charming, beautifully wrought, if somehow depthless film - eccentric but heartfelt, and thought through to the tiniest, quirkiest detail in the classic Anderson style...

The director's best film since 1998's Rushmore, it has none of the self-conscious smugness of The Life Aquatic or the empty eccentricity of The Royal Tenenbaums.

There's no denying the extravagant pleasures "Moonrise Kingdom" affords as an erudite wish-fulfillment fantasy of empowerment and autonomy.

"Moonrise Kingdom" is Anderson's seventh movie, and it's the first since "Rushmore" that works from the opening shot to the final image.

Its portrait of young love is both mature and defiantly utopian.

Even as Anderson pushes us away, the kids - and a wonderful Willis, as their self-appointed protector - reach out and pull us back in.

Beguiling and endearing...

It's an extraordinary thing, from start to finish.

It left me bemused instead of moved, but true Andersonites will likely float away in a state of nirvana.

We may look back on Anderson's works as we do on the boxes of Joseph Cornell -- formal troves of frippery, studded with nostalgic private jokes, that lodge inexplicably in the heart. In Moonrise Kingdom, that lodging is already under way.

Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born.

It's a fable about what it feels like to be 12 years old and afflicted, from head to toe, by a romantic crush the size of a planet.

Wes Anderson's most intimate film since Bottle Rocket (1996) and maybe his most deeply felt overall.

The usual complaints and caveats about Anderson - he's precious, his characters have no grounding in the real world - can be made about Moonrise Kingdom, but so what?

The latest unadulterated delight from Wes Anderson, director of "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

Anderson never loses his core themes - young love, the need to escape, the bind and bluster of family. His "Kingdom" may not be large, but it is perfectly appointed.

Anderson and his actors are able to convey more genuine feeling through these devices than most filmmakers can with more-traditional means.

Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is naive, mannered, pretentious and incomprehensible.

Moonrise Kingdom represents a sort of non-magical Neverland -- that momentous instant when the world can seem so small and a naive crush can feel all-consuming.

I liked this one because of its young performers, the evocative island setting (filmed in Rhode Island), Alexandre Desplat's lovely score and Robert Yeoman's slightly grainy cinematography.

A literate, knowing and sweet-hearted reverie about adolescence, that strange gap between childhood and adulthood. It's beautifully rendered by a filmmaker very much in touch with his inner rebel kid.

Terrific work by an enviably talented filmmaker, with a wistful poignance that will stick with you.