Wes Anderson's latest colorful comedy melodrama hits high-def, and if you love the filmmaker, you'll dig this Blu-ray....
Universal / 94 Minutes / 2012 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: October 16, 2012
The value in Moonrise Kingdom is that it delivers exactly what you'd expect. Should you be a Wes Anderson hater, this Cannes fest opener should fan your flames - the movie relies on the same distinctly calculated whimsy that every other Anderson movie spends so much time agonizing over. But if you belong to the church of Wes, Moonrise Kingdom is a new chapter in the filmmaker's unfolding oeuvre, a light yet piercing investigation of the perils and thrills of youth and first love.
Unsurprisingly, viewers are likely to fall in between these two tenets: Moonrise Kingdom is absolutely one of the most polarizing movies of the year, one that has just as much potential to enrapture viewers as it does to send them packing. Either way, you have to give it to Anderson to continue to play different verses of the same song so effectively - I hate the comparison, but he may be the closest modern cinema has to a Fellini - but for better and for worse, you're going to know in ten minutes whether Moonrise Kingdom is going to inspire or enrage you.
Like a Hardy Boys mystery as snapped by an Instagram app on a hipster summer camp, Moonrise Kingdom follows a young orphan named Sam (Jared Gilman) who finds love in Suzy (Kara Hayward) and subsequently runs off, leaving a dream team of high-profile Hollywooders - Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton - to track them down. The movie belongs to the children (the tweens, I guess), but the diorama here is, after all, one made by Anderson, so hyper-histrionic turns from folks like Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in supporting roles are by all means par for the course.
Again, you get out of Moonrise Kingdom what you bring to it. If Royal Tenenbaums still entertains and that Rushmore Blu-ray of yours remains in pretty steady rotation, then Kingdom will at the very least pass the better part of two hours - for die-hards I'd wager it falls between Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited. But God help you if you don't have a sweet tooth for Anderson's singular style: if Moonrise Kingdom doesn't take you away in its first couple chapters on Blu-ray, you might find yourself hitting 'Eject' before its halfway point.
