(Very) old-fashioned comedy

Rating: 8/10 (23 November 2012)

Whenever I see a movie that I truly admire I always like to look at the most negative IMDb reviews before posting my own. In the case of Moonrise Kingdom it is apparent that Wes Anderson is very much an acquired taste. Many of our greatest artists are.
It's interesting to see so many people who don't regard this as a comedy simply because (it seems) it isn't paced like a Judd Apatow movie. Without trying to sound too pretentious, Moonrise Kingdom is a comedy in the Shakespearean sense: more Midsummer Night's Dream than The Hangover.
Anderson has an extraordinary ability to turn the most mundane subject matter into a magical, even mystical experience. The story here is simple, but the treatment captivates the viewer (well, many of us anyway) because he approaches the story with such a unique combination of innocence and style. Every shot in Moonrise Kingdom is designed to dazzle us visually. Yes, it is calculated and the acting can appear stilted, but there is simply no one in modern cinema whose vision is as clear-headed.
In some ways Anderson is to comedy what Hitchcock is to the suspense genre. Every frame (or pixel) is the emanation of a unique personality. We should be grateful that there remains a place for such filmmakers in a world where individualism has a difficult path.