Moonrise Kingdom

Whoops, forgot to talk about this one before I left. On my birthday, my dad and I went to see Moonrise Kingdom, and we were the only ones there. That was the first time I ever saw a movie in an empty theater.

This is the latest opus from quirk-meister Wes Anderson, whom, just before this film, was responsible for the Fantastic Mr. Fox adaptation. To this day, I consider Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl to be a match made in heaven. If they were to remake Charlie & the Chocolate Factory again, Anderson would be a perfect choice.

Anyway, this movie is about two 12-year-olds who runaway together. The boy is a "Khaki Scout" who is disliked by everyone in his troop, and the girl is a troubled bookworm who can go into berserk rages. The boy is an orphan while the girl has the misfortune of having Francis MacDormand and Bill Murray as parents. The plot of the first half of the film is the scouts' search for the runaways, led by scout master Edward Norton and local cop Bruce Willis.

The film definitely has a certain style, this is Anderson we're talking about, and I certainly liked it. Basically, most of the dialogue from the kid actors are glib and blunt, while the adults...actually the adults are also glib and blunt, it's more like the children act like adults while the adults act like kids, kinda sorta.

While the characters aren't what I call "memorable", the subtle comedy in this film does stick out to me. This film made me really consider what I want from a movie. Usually, I want to care about the characters, so that I'm immersed in the story, but this film isn't like that. This film seems like it wants the audience to remain an outsider looking in on the obviously ridiculous succession of events. I guess, sometimes, the character don't have to be three-dimensional and human. Sometimes, the film itself has to be a character (if that makes sense).

I'm definitely getting this on DVD.