Annoyingly quirky and pretentious

Rating: 1/10 (29 August 2013)

I just can't fathom why this movie is getting such good reviews. Most likely the first and last Wes Anderson movie I'm seeing. There's nothing genuine or charming in this film. There's just this forced intentional quirkiness to this film that I can't stand. It just tries too hard to be quirky and cute and ends up feeling pretentious. The line between quirky and annoying can be very thin indeed and for me this movie crossed it by a mile.
The film is partly categorized as a comedy but I didn't even get a slight chuckle during the entire film. Was I supposed to? Everything's delivered deadpan and I didn't buy the dialogue between Sam and Suzy at all. Deadpan humor is good and all but you can't have everyone doing it for the whole movie. Also, I didn't like this whole idea of kids delivering adult dialogue and ended up disliking the protagonists a lot. They didn't feel like kids in the slightest so how is this whole first love between kids angle going to work here then? They're just flat and emotionally detached. All of the characters are essentially missing a human core.
I also didn't buy the love story between Sam and Suzy and that makes everything else pointless. I'm supposed to think they're in love but it didn't even seem like they liked each other. Didn't care for the rest of the characters either despite there being some serious talent behind them. If there had been at least one or two there who I liked somewhat I wouldn't give this one star. Visually it was kind of interesting but without a good story and characters, what does it matter?