"Our daughter has been abducted by one of these beige lunatics."

Rating: 7/10 (6 January 2013)

Another reviewer on this board (hipstercritic) has this to say about the film - 'Moonrise Kingdom is that place of beauty and passion that we all have been in at least once in our lives – the one place on earth where we believe that anything is possible. It has since been lost, but it persists in our memories in moments of nostalgia'.
I realize that for the times we live in, kids grow up a lot quicker and are exposed to far more 'adult' situations than I would have had as a kid growing up in the Fifties. When I was a twelve year old Boy Scout, guys still pretty much hung out with other guys and girls kept company with other girls. I was fairly enjoying the film until the point when the scouts ganged up on Sam (Jared Gilman ) and Suzy (Kara Hayward) and poor old Snoopy took it in the neck. At that point, I thought if Travolta were in the picture, maybe he could bring the dog back to life later on in the story, but that was not to be. It was down hill from there.
If kids are growing up too soon today, here's one reason why - film makers like Wes Anderson keep lowering the bar on behaviors that in my youth were relegated to adults. Personally, I don't think Sam and Suzy were having sex in the tent, but the suggestion that they were and making it look 'cute and innocent' is one of the reasons why we have this culture that seems to grow more morally rotten as time goes by. Will the next picture depict eleven year olds having sex? Ten, nine, eight? How far do we want to push that envelope? How about a picture that shows how wonderful the NAMBLA folks are?
I get it about the alienation of youth and how many teens and pre-teens find it difficult to fit in. The adults in this picture are all portrayed as goof-balls and idiots, while the young lovers are more mature and wise beyond their years. So the mature Suzy uses a pair of scissors to stab a Khaki scout in the kidney. Imagine when she grows up and gets her hands on an AK-47. I know this is all starting to sound ridiculous to some readers, but seriously, when do we stop sugar coating deviant behavior and call it out for what it is. In another twenty years or so, Sam and Suzy will suddenly find themselves in the same circumstances that they find untenable in their parents, guardians and scout leaders. They'll wind up being the characters they warned themselves about.
It doesn't make me happy to be cynical about stuff like this, especially movies that are meant to entertain. But it's not very entertaining when the lead characters make it to the end of the story and wind up about to commit suicide until one of the idiot adults intervenes. If you found this film to be wonderfully attuned to that inner child of yours, so be it. But there's another way of looking at it.