Review of Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Edgar C — 17 Apr 2014

Normally, the term "style over substance" is used as a negative connotation. It is not always something bad, because some movies were meant to be like that. Moonrise Kingdom is a very good example of such term with a negative connotation.

After what has been a decaying filmography, Wes Anderson becomes intoxicated with his own style and floods it with nonsense. This kind of material requires a specific passionate, childish, playful mind to represent a story of such fantastical and funny features, which even have the potential of appealing to our adventurous childhood. Two names come to my mind instantly: Tim Burton and Chris Columbus. So this project:

A) belongs to another era, and.

B) belongs to another director.

I don't condemn Wes for experimenting, but this project simply does not correlate with the satirical seriousness (oxymoron?) or the introspective tones of his past projects, so it was more or less predictable that one director deviating from his usual stuff to pretend to be somebody else was very dangerous. Whereas he shows dominion of angles and spaces, he displays a serious lack of credibility and some moments seem either preposterous, or irrelevant to our cinematic experience. Characters are forgettable, even though the cast is attractive. Child characters are unlikeable, even though they are the protagonists. The pace decays in the second act, even if the intention transmitted was to keep up with an energetic rhythm. It seems like several things backfired against Wes, like a project that escaped his control no matter how hard he tried to compensate... well... substance with style.

Potentially, this is the director's worst film and a considerable disappointment, even if some creative artistic craft remains scattered throughout what could have been a complete mess with absolutely no soul. Will redemption come?

62/100.