Falling in love with each other, two young teenagers live in the distant coast near New England, run away from their own country, the thing that brings terrible for them, according to their lack of experience in life and brings terrible for them, as all the country have gone in many journeys, in order to find them.
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.
'Moonrise Kingdom' magically recreates a child's-eye view of the early 1960s, bringing back memories of tents, tree houses, campfires, cub scouts, innocence, and first kisses.
It's funny, it's playful, it's full of nostalgic blasts and period trappings, but most of all it is loving: accepting of the headstrong kids determined to find their place in the world...
"Moonrise Kingdom" takes place in a world where everything seems pleasantly faded, where people read crackly-covered library books rather than e-books, and where young people are allowed to be genuinely innocent.
J. Olson
Cinemixtape
April 15, 2016
This is the work of an auteur - confident, but understated; beautiful, but heartbreaking; intoxicating, but sobering.
Phonies may complain that Anderson's island of misfit toys is a retreat from the real world, but for pure-hearted adventurers who share the secret map, "Moonrise Kingdom" is a joy that cannot be eclipsed.
Though undeniably smart and charming, "Moonrise Kingdom" loves itself the way the callow Holden Caulfield loves himself: unconditionally. Salinger understood the problem with that. Anderson may not.
It is no insult to tag Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom as "charming" or "enchanting." Those qualities, sadly missing in this vertigo-inducing era of big screen alien invasions and superhero exploits, are here, three times filled and overflowing.
