Delightful

Rating: 8/10 (30 April 2013)

Sam and Suzy are stuck in their own world of young love, and have abandoned all for a trek into the outdoors. The adults organize a search party, which includes Sam's Scout Leaders and Suzy's eccentric parents (Bill Murray is wonderfully melancholic, as usual). While hunted, Sam and Suzy exhibit all the awkwardness of first love's sensual curiosity and idealism. All this occurs under the shadow of an approaching hurricane.
Here, Anderson skillfully balances the honest and the fantastical, the commonplace and the bizarre. No matter where the actors fall on those scales, however, we never feel like the actors are acting TO us. There are moments where I audibly laughed, but not as a reaction to a punchline. A huge part of the success of the film, I feel, was the actors' ability to convey a serious innocence that makes you believe what they believe. There are certainly other films that share the indie-feel and quirky film-making of Moonrise Kingdom, but where we see living actors here, we see mannequins elsewhere.
The film is accompanied by selections from Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, and Robert D. Yeoman's cinematography is excellent. There really isn't an area of the production team that is seen as lacking. The film is shot with a golden color palette that is not only visually interesting, but aids in its reminiscent and vintage story. Wes Anderson's films are an acquired taste. Don't get me wrong, not like a "David Lynch" acquired taste, but there's something oddly simplistic and undiluted about his film-making that doesn't quite resonate with a portion of the audience (which is OK).
However, for me, watching this film was akin to finding an old childhood lunchbox in your Grandma's attic. It is a refreshing reminder of the good and bad, and the delightful and uncomfortable, episodes of youth.