Moonrise Kingdom Reviews
Top CriticMost of Wes Anderson's previous pictures came from the head; Moonrise Kingdom is one from the heart.
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| Original Score: 4/4
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.
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| Original Score: B+
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.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The latest unadulterated delight from Wes Anderson, director of "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox."
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| Original Score: 4/4
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?
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Anderson and his actors are able to convey more genuine feeling through these devices than most filmmakers can with more-traditional means.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
One knock against some of Anderson's previous efforts is that they're too clever - so clever, in fact, that the humanity gets sucked out of them. That doesn't happen here.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Anderson's best feature since Rushmore, in part because, like that film, it takes as its primary subject matter odd, precocious children, rather than the damaged and dissatisfied adults they will one day become.
There's no denying the extravagant pleasures "Moonrise Kingdom" affords as an erudite wish-fulfillment fantasy of empowerment and autonomy.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Last time out, in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson adapted a children's book by Roald Dahl. Now, in Moonrise Kingdom, he's made one of his own.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's an adventure, a love story, a biblical allegory complete with approaching storm, a mash note to composer Benjamin Britten and a profoundly touching discourse on the needs of troubled children.
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| Original Score: 4/4
"Moonrise Kingdom" is Anderson's seventh movie, and it's the first since "Rushmore" that works from the opening shot to the final image.
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| Original Score: 4/4
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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Like all Wes Anderson movies, it is naïve, mannered, pretentious and incomprehensible.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Wes Anderson's most intimate film since Bottle Rocket (1996) and maybe his most deeply felt overall.
Hayward and Gilman are newcomers who are asked to carry much of the film and pull it off with lovely understatement and extraordinary believability.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Its moments of transporting beauty and visual brilliance overcame my growing aversion to Wes Anderson's brand of ultra-stylized archness.
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.
What makes it an Anderson movie are the things he adds which mark all his films - the pop-cultural obsessions and excruciatingly detailed set decorations, overarching thematic concerns and little stylistic tics.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
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.
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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
A gorgeously shot, ingeniously crafted, über-Andersonian bonbon that, even in its most irritatingly whimsical moments, remains an effective deliverer of cinematic pleasure.
"Moonrise Kingdom" breezes along with a beautifully coordinated admixture of droll humor, deadpan and slapstick.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
In this tale about growing up and falling in love, it seems Anderson has found his true heart.
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| Original Score: 4/5
The hilarious and heartfelt Moonrise Kingdom is a consistent pleasure. By evoking the joys and terrors of childhood, it reminds us how to be alive.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
For all the self-conscious distancing techniques and quirky humor Anderson employs, when he's at his best, his work can be surprising in its disarming emotion.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
Even as Anderson pushes us away, the kids - and a wonderful Willis, as their self-appointed protector - reach out and pull us back in.
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| Original Score: 4/5
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.
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| Original Score: B-
Moonrise Kingdom is a deeply romantic film, perhaps the sweetest and most compassionate Anderson has ever made.
Resembles a novelization of Godard's Pierrot le Fou as conceived by storybook artist Richard Scarry.
A continuously surprising and delightful adolescent romance set in 1965, in what appears to be a dollhouse.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Its portrait of young love is both mature and defiantly utopian.
If you love Wes Anderson, you'll love this: The best of what he can do is vibrantly on display.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It left me bemused instead of moved, but true Andersonites will likely float away in a state of nirvana.
Terrific work by an enviably talented filmmaker, with a wistful poignance that will stick with you.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Its childishness, sense of innocence and eye for fun all make it a very easy film to love.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Cheers for a Cannes director who has infused his technical mastery with radiant life. In the Museum of the World of Wes Anderson, the dolls are dancing.
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.
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.
As in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson is able to express sincere personal connection and compatibility while employing a highly artificial style.
