Wes Anderson, maker of a string of offbeat movies, including Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr Fox, has come up with another quirky comedy that couldn’t have been made by anyone else. Set in the summer of 1965 on an island off the coast of New England, Moonrise Kingdom is a highly unusual story of young love in which the young lovers are two lonely, smart, misunderstood 12-year-old children: unpopular boy scout Sam (Jared Gilman) and his pen-pal Suzy (Kara Hayward). When the pair run away together, the island’s dysfunctional inhabitants, including chain-smoking scoutmaster Edward Norton, kindly local police chief Bruce Willis and Suzy’s unhappy parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), join forces to track them down. Anderson films all this in a hyper-stylised, deliberately artificial manner that won’t appeal to all viewers, but for those in tune with the director’s idiosyncratic sensibility the technique actually draws the viewer into the movie’s world and into the children’s emotional lives. The youngsters may be oddballs, Sam with his Davy Crockett hat and corncob pipe, and Suzy with her knee socks and Sunday school shoes, but Anderson’s handling of their pre-pubescent love has real heart.
Released on DVD & Blu-ray by Universal Pictures on Monday 1st October.
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