Movie Review: Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - Youth and Romance in Rhode Island

I took a short break from SciFi flicks to watch Moonrise Kingdom with my wife last weekend. It is a really quirky film from Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) with Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, and even Jason Schwartzman (from one of my most mourned TV show deaths: Bored to Death). On an island (in the Rhode Island sound I think), two young 12-year old rejects run away and discover love while being pursued by most of the adults on the island. There are some touching scenes – Bill Murray does a particularly excellent job – but the movie never insults its audience or sinks too low into pathos. There is lots of oddball humor (I never saw Rushmore (I know, my bad!) but I enjoyed Tenenbaums) that is typical of Wes writing and his style. The acting of Bruce Willis as a quiet, dumb, island cop and loser is particularly striking as it is so different than the roles we are used to seeing him in. The two kids did a fabulous job in showing us that love doesn’t know any boundaries and can be both fun and exciting. I am really scared of giving you spoilers and ruining the film for you if I say more…so let me close by just saying that this film is definitely worth a bottle of chianti on the couch in the jammies on DVD or Netflix. Who knows, you might get lucky afterwards