Charming, enveloping, seriously funny, and beautiful.

| Jun 10, 2021

Moonrise Kingdom makes a winning appeal to the precious joys of the pre-teen imagination circa 1965.

| Aug 30, 2017

The film is frequently funny, always elegant (or mock-elegant), and something that would make Humbert Humbert laugh all the way to his asylum.

| Jun 17, 2013

It's not my favourite Wes Anderson film but I do like it very much.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 30, 2012

There are many echoes of Anderson's earlier films, particularly Rushmore and Tenenbaums. He's an unapologetic romantic and Moonrise Kingdom is a study in wish-fulfillment.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 30, 2012

Anderson never loses his core themes - young love, the need to escape, the bind and bluster of family. His "Kingdom" may not be large, but it is perfectly appointed.

| Original Score: B+ | Jun 15, 2012

When the storm arrives, it's a doozy, especially as it intensifies a final, thrilling chase sequence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2012

The performances from Hayward and Gilman, as runaways, are at the heart of the film, and they manage to seem both innocent and powerful.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2012

Phonies may complain that Anderson's island of misfit toys is a retreat from the real world, but for pure-hearted adventurers who share the secret map, "Moonrise Kingdom" is a joy that cannot be eclipsed.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 8, 2012

Though undeniably smart and charming, "Moonrise Kingdom" loves itself the way the callow Holden Caulfield loves himself: unconditionally. Salinger understood the problem with that. Anderson may not.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 8, 2012

"Moonrise Kingdom" takes place in a world where everything seems pleasantly faded, where people read crackly-covered library books rather than e-books, and where young people are allowed to be genuinely innocent.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 7, 2012

The usual complaints and caveats about Anderson - he's precious, his characters have no grounding in the real world - can be made about Moonrise Kingdom, but so what?

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 7, 2012

Anderson and his actors are able to convey more genuine feeling through these devices than most filmmakers can with more-traditional means.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 7, 2012

Anderson's best feature since Rushmore, in part because, like that film, it takes as its primary subject matter odd, precocious children, rather than the damaged and dissatisfied adults they will one day become.

| Jun 1, 2012

There's no denying the extravagant pleasures "Moonrise Kingdom" affords as an erudite wish-fulfillment fantasy of empowerment and autonomy.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2012

Last time out, in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson adapted a children's book by Roald Dahl. Now, in Moonrise Kingdom, he's made one of his own.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 1, 2012

Wes Anderson films are not so much directed as curated.

| Original Score: B- | May 31, 2012

It's an adventure, a love story, a biblical allegory complete with approaching storm, a mash note to composer Benjamin Britten and a profoundly touching discourse on the needs of troubled children.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 31, 2012

"Moonrise Kingdom" is Anderson's seventh movie, and it's the first since "Rushmore" that works from the opening shot to the final image.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 31, 2012

It's a fable about what it feels like to be 12 years old and afflicted, from head to toe, by a romantic crush the size of a planet.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 31, 2012