Moonrise Kingdom Is Good. Really Good

I’m not the first to say this, but there’s something about Wes Anderson films that make them seem as if every frame could be printed and hung as art. This has never been more evident than in the opening sequence of Moonrise Kingdom, when we begin by panning through a house as if it were a dollhouse, seeing little slices of life-in-action from each character.

But the real trick to a Wes Anderson film is the ability to have dialogue that is both funny and sad at the same time, through the carefully deliberate use of irony.

Moonrise Kingdom Is Good. For reals.

This artistic trick began in Rushmore, peaked in The Royal Tenenbaums, and despite dipping for less-than-great movies like The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, has made a full resurgence in Moonrise Kingdom.

This is a movie that not everyone understood. Most of the comedy has a subtlety that if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, then no amount of explaining will help. It even features Bob Balaban narrating the movie in a red pea coat and fingerless christmas gloves.

if you don’t understand how awesome this is just on sight, then you have no capacity to understand art.

It takes a certain grade of actor to be able to execute the ironic funny sadness of the brilliantly-written lines of dialogue. Only performers who can master the cadence of absolute irony in each juicy sentence. In this movie, Bruce Willis can’t do it very well… he’s not suited to it. Bruce Willis is good at shooting at German terrorists and performing straight comedy, but he doesn’t have the droll style to make a role like this work.

Bill Murray is perfectly suited to it, which explains why he is in almost every Wes Anderson movie. Jason Schwartzman, too.

So Bruce Willis is a check against. Still, Moonrise Kingdom Is Good.

Otherwise, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this film. I’d put it against Argo and Zero Dark Thirty as the best movie of last year. It’s a shame that it got stiffed at the Oscars, but just like how there’s no sex in the champagne room, sometimes, life just isn’t fair.