Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

This is going to be one those entries, I can just feel it. It's going to take me forever to write this because the entire process is going to be bogged down by wanting to be fair and objective about "Moonrise Kingdom." I don't have to do that, mind you. This is my blog. I can write whatever the crap I want to. But I do want to be fair, because with a movie like this, I can tell that there will be an audience for it.

I'm just not it.

I've only seen two of Wes Anderson's movies, this and "The Royal Tenenbaums," and just by seeing those I can pretty much guarantee that I'm probably not going to like anything he makes very much. I didn't necessarily hate "The Royal Tenenbaums," but it wasn't exactly turning my dials. I think that's obvious considering I remember absolutely nothing about it besides that tombstone of Gene Hackman's.

But that's not surprising, because it illustrates perfectly what my main issue with Wes Anderson's films are: They are about nothing. Wes Anderson's films are what you would get if the Coen Brothers took their usual drama/comedies about quirky slackers getting their hands on a lot of dirty money, ditched the dirty money angle, made it a slice-of-life drama/comedy and kept everything else. And put Bill Murray in it. I swear, Wes Anderson is like Tim Burton with the amount of recycling he does with his casts.

Some may say that it's unfair to claim "Moonrise Kingdom" is about nothing. Well, they're right, it is about something. It wouldn't be much of a movie without something happening. And for this film, that something happens to be that a boy and a girl run away together on an island, and the adults and the rest of the boy's scout troop go out to find them. The whole film is presented in a very picturesque, storybook style fashion that gives the impression that you're looking at a pop-up book or something. And unsurprisingly, the charm is cranked to 11. This is a film with a death-grip on the throat of whatever cute little animal they're milking the charm out of, and they're squeezing it dry to the very last drop.

I actually noticed in the camera movements themselves that great pains were taken to be sure that the actors on screen appeared as literally two-dimensional as possible. For instance, there were never any panning shots around anybody, many shots were static as the characters walked in and out of frame, and there were a lot of very wide shots with actors on the extreme opposite sides of the screen. What this did, in addition to the bright, cheerful color palate, was to give the impression that you were looking at a picture book. In fact, it's to the point were the house of the main girl looks more like a dollhouse, and I'm not sure they didn't actually use a miniature with some camera tricks to put the actors inside.

If you saw the movie you'd understand what I'm talking about. They look 6 inches tall inside there.

There was also a lot of scrapbook style cutaways and inserts of maps or whatnot that would have looked out of place had this rest of the film not been just as stylistic. One thing I must admit was that "Moonrise Kingdom" was very effective in conveying its style and tone, and it never wavered from that.

However, and maybe I was just in a bad mood, it didn't work on me. It smacked of effort. It beat me over the head with a crowbar covered with Beatrix Potter artwork while yelling "HERE! ARE YOU CHARMED YET!?! HAH?!? HOW ABOUT NOW?!?!?" And frankly, I didn't appreciate it. Now on the other hand, if you enjoy that kind of thing, specifically crowbars with Beatrix Potter artwork on them smashing into your cranium, than by all means, watch "Moonrise Kingdom."

In all honesty, I would have been fine with the tone, and much of the movie as a whole, had it been for some changes to the cast. Not big changes, mind you. Just the two main characters. That's all. Nothing huge.

Now, in this case, one was not as bad as the other, although I felt they suffered from much of the same problem. Kara Hayward as Suzy, the girl who runs away from her home, was actually somewhat entertaining and even occasionally convincing. That is, when she was given an opportunity to emote. This only happens very rarely, I assure you.

Just go ahead and guess what emotion she's conveying. It's the same expression for all of them...

You remember Wednesday from "The Addams Family?" Yeah. That's about the level of passion and intensity she displays about 97% of the time. All of her line readings - ALL of them - are said with the same monotone, lifeless, nobody-on-the-planet-talks-like-that way that apparently is the only way to portray a "quirky" character. I don't really blame her, though. I think Kara is probably a fine actress, and will probably have a good career ahead of her. I blame Wes Anderson, because this kind of dullness is, from what I've seen, one of his calling cards.

Now, I gave Kara some slack, but it's hard to do the same for Jared Gilman, playing Sam, our hero. He's the boy scout that abandons his troop, and I have to come out and say that I found him to be downright unwatchable. He is terrible, and again, I'm not sure if I should blame the actor or the director. I'm more inclined to say it's Anderson's fault for making him read his lines in such a way, but at the same time, at least Kara was able to slightly convince me that she was a real-life person. There's no chance with this Jared kid.

It appears that this kid has no concept of the use of punctuation or normal cadences when speaking. Everything he says is delivered in this rapid-fire, disinterested manner that comes off like a night of really really bad amateur community theater, and it just baffles me that anyone could not find him distracting. He comes off a total creep - or someone who is going to grow up to have a nice collection of human femurs under his mattress. He's supposed to be charming?
 

He also looks like Steven Page from BNL. Which is also weird.

I can't believe I'm throwing up a defense for him here, but even a bad kid actor could do better than the wretched performance I saw here. It's got to be Wes Anderson telling him to do it like that. Apparently when you're a Indie film darling, you can get away with terrible performances all in the name of being "quirky." What a crock.

Oddly enough I did like the rest of the cast, but then again when you've got great actors like Edward Norton, Bruce Willis and Bill Murray it's easy to like them. And although both Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand were kind of roped into the same Wes Anderson patented goofiness that plagued much of the rest of the cast, they still managed to be likable. It wasn't like "Burn After Reading," where I wanted to take a hatchet to the face of every single last cast member.

Look out, the camera is telling me we're about to get zany! Woah-ho-ho!

Actually, I found myself liking Edward Norton's character a lot. Despite starting off as one of the goofiest, he became one of the most believable and likeable, since he's pretty much the only one with an actual character-arc. Imagine that. He was also able to elicit most of the laughs I got from "Moonrise Kingdom." In fact, I'm trying to think of a laugh I got that didn't involve him, and I'm drawing a blank.

Okay, it's time to wrap this up. Did I like "Moonrise Kingdom?" No. Was it pretty much predetermined that I wasn't going to? Yeah. It's just not for me. But if you like Wes Anderson, all of what I said above can be disregarded, because the reasons that I disliked "Moonrise Kingdom" is probably the reasons you'll love it.

But there's one thing that is not defensible. The dog. They killed the dog. There is a body count of exactly 1 in this film, and it's the damn dog. And there was NO reason for it at all. In fact, I'm still not sure what the crap happened, but the dog is dead. It's name was Snoopy. And "Moonrise Kingdom" had him in the movie for one reason: To die for no reason.

Moonrise Kingdom...you're a jerk.

 
THE BOTTOM LINE - I don't like Wes Anderson, so I didn't like "Moonrise Kingdom." I found it boring and not a little bit pretentious, and it tried way too hard to be charming. But fans of Wes Anderson will probably consider it the masterpiece they consider anything he touches.