94% Moonrise Kingdom

All Critics (156) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (146) | Rotten (9) | DVD (1)

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.

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.

The latest unadulterated delight from Wes Anderson, director of "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox."

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?

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

One knock against some of Anderson's previous efforts is that they're too clever - so clever, in fact, that the humanity gets sucked out of them. That doesn't happen here.

It's funny, it's touching, it's Anderson doing what he does better than he's ever done before.

Wonderfully inventive and entirely immersing.

The great thing about Wes Anderson, other than his fabulously childlike imagination, is his deep attention to the smallest details.

This isn't Wes Anderson's best effort by any stretch. However, any Anderson is better than no Anderson at all.

This film contains some of cinema history's best lightning strikes.

Wes Anderson's films are stylistic carbon copies of each other, merely swapping out storylines and characters. It's like going to a bunch of different restaurants and ordering the exact same meal -- you walk in knowing what you're going to get.

Most of Wes Anderson's previous pictures came from the head; Moonrise Kingdom is one from the heart.

Moonrise Kingdom is a charming reminder of Anderson's particular talent for spinning fantasies about the collective childhood we all wish we had.

As fussy as anything Anderson has ever done, but instead of being overstuffed, as virtually all of his movies have been, for good and ill, [the film] is mostly delicate.

A sometimes precocious but mostly whimsical and artfully fluent evocation of adolescent enthusiasm and adult ennui.

Anderson's latest effort is like an Instagram photo - a nostalgic snapshot that seems to be of different time and place but is really the twee affectation of a world that never existed.

[Anderson] may make it look easy because of how firmly his mannerisms are established at this point, but it takes a real artist to evoke the rocky emotional storms of adolescence and adulthood with such clear eyes and precise voice.

Anderson's films have been described as quirky, eccentric and whimsical. But there is also a genuine charm and heart that is driven by the Anderson's love for his characters, and the love those characters have for one another.

Wes Anderson, at 43, is still grappling with adolescence.

More unbearable Anderson whimsy.

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

Only Anderson could find the subtle brilliance in a shirtless, ax-wielding Murray dejectedly declaring "I'm going outside to find a tree to chop down."

Did you think Wes Anderson had no more tricks up his sleeve, that he was just showing us the same thing over and over again, that he couldn't surprise us? Wrong.

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