2012 Wes Anderson movieRating: 17/20 (Jen: 17/20)
Plot: The troubled daughter of attorneys and an outcast scout run away from home and camp respectively in order to have a romantic adventure. Scout Master Ward, a handful of scouts, the Bishop parents, and the island's law enforcement search for the couple.
Wes Anderson's movies, maybe this one more than any of the others, are like Precious Moments figurines made for hipsters. If you don't like his movies--especially The Life Aquatic--you aren't going to like this one either. And if you do, you're likely to be a fan of this one. A lot of new faces to the Wes Anderson world--lovely Edward Norton, Bruce Willis with a little hair, Frances McDormand. It's an oddball world to inhabit, like its own little island. Coincidentally, this takes place on a little island, the kind of setting that part of me knows actually exists but that seems like it can only exist in a Wes Anderson movie. These characters are all his type of characters, nutty as can be, and I guess I can see how some people might have a problem with that. Of course, you've got a bunch of kids in there, too, and although there are a couple moments when the kids are kids--as in the type of child actor I normally really hate--they're given such funny things to do and say here that I didn't mind it. Oh, and Bob Balaban is in this, a bearded Bob Balaban, and his ridiculous opening narrative bit squeezed the first laugh out of me. This is a very funny movie. My favorite bit might have been a big action sequence involving a motorcycle, the flash of an arrow, a dog, a tree, and lefty scissors. Lefty scissors! You know what Alfred Hitchcock always said about lefty scissors, right? I'm paraphrasing, but it was something about how if a director shows the audience a pair of lefty scissors, you can safely predict that those lefty scissors will be used at some point in the movie. I was never clear on what happened during that scene, by the way, but it was shockingly funny stuff. Like with the underrated The Life Aquatic, this gets really nutsy at the end, but here, as it was there, the nutsiness really fits with the themes. This also looks a lot like a Wes Anderson movie, almost identically colored and textured as The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Of course, you just need to see a single frame of this movie to know who its director is, and again, that's not going to be a good thing for all viewers. And the opening shots, a journey through the Bishop's house that reminds me of the tour of the Zissou's submarine, is remarkable in how it sets the tone for the whole movie and gives such a good introduction of the Bishop family despite not including any dialogue. I also loved the music, some from Devo guy Mark Mothersbaugh and a lot of playful vocal classical stuff. I still can't get a final "cuckoo" out of my brain, and one number with angelic voices and boy scout trumpets was something I almost thought only I could hear, an ear hallucination or something. Oh, and there was a blast from my childhood with the work of Benjamin Britten. And a lot of Hank Williams. It's all just so beautiful, and I really didn't want the movie to end.
Side note: The theater we saw this at has a summer midnight movies thing. I tried to convince Jennifer to stick around and watch The Room, but she had no interest.
10 comments:
i love wes. i think life aquatic was my least fav, but still love it. i'd go 19 or 20 on this. i usually like his movies even better on a second viewing, so i'm excited to see this again. i was looking up the soundtrack and i think he replaced mothersbaugh though it sounded like him. that angelic choir stuff was amazing. realized that he likes killing dogs, tannenbaums being another example. i guess it helps cut thru the cuteness.
Just one song for Mothersbaugh, I guess. Yeah, that angelic choir stuff and the orchestra for children thing at the beginning were both Benjamin Britten.
Poor dogs. I really liked how in this one, that dog was really only there to die. He didn't do anything else.
Almost gave this an 18, but I was afraid I'd be ridiculed for rating a movie I'd seen in a theater too high. As you know, I don't like to be ridiculed.
a 17 is ridicule material. 3 flaw points? I'm not buying it.
You're not the type to ridicule though, so I feel pretty safe.
I just popped in one of your 20/20's, by the way. Shocked that it isn't already on the blog!
I saw this tonight. I did not think it was possible, but Anderson actually is making his movies somehow even flimsier than before.
Why the hell did you like this? There is zero plot...there are zero real characters or people. Watching this you realize that Anderson spends more time picking out the dress, earrings and eye makeup for the girl, than he does on any aspect of script. Its entertaining in the same way that watching an tropical aquarium is entertaining....pretty colors and ooh, that fish there scooted pretty quickly into its little hidey hole.
There is absolutely nothing to this movie...nothing. Can anyone say that a single person in this was at all believable? Was it supposed to be a fairy tale? Calling it cotton candy would be insulting to cotton candy. Its more like the soap bubbles you get from a bottle. Colors reflect in them, but they are gone in an instant and the world is neither poorer or richer for them being here.
A 17? Really? For what?
An 11. Strictly for Edward Norton being at least somewhat interesting and having a narrative point.
I only skimmed my write-up for this, but I thought I did a fairly good job of explaining why I liked it.
I don't get the "zero plot" argument. How does it not have a plot? You might as well make the claim that 'Romeo and Juliet' doesn't have a plot. The plot of this is very very simple. It's a love story. Boy meets girl. They each have their own individual problems. They decide to run away together. Things keep intervening and try to keep them apart.
I don't know why you require real characters in films either. They're movies. I don't need anything at all in a movie to seem real. I get enough reality in my daily life. Do the characters in the Avengers movie all seem real? They can fly and turn green and big and shit. It's fantasy. Oh, and what about 'Jaws'? Isn't your character criticism here like me saying, "That thing doesn't even act like a real shark!"?
I don't think you like Wes Anderson's style, and my advice would be not to watch any more of his movies. If he makes one that is drastically different that I think you might like, I'll let you know.
Well he made The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Which had a source material that made it possible for Anderson to tell a story with an actual plot. And its ridiculous to compare a shark to what are supposed to be actual people. Where have there ever been kids who talk or act like the kids in this film? Every single kid talks and acts the same as well. So you have an entire screen full of them. THATS what I mean by real characters...its just the exact same character over and over again, and that character is so flimsily written that its completely unbelievable. Even in a movie as 'fantasy like" as The Avengers, the characters have different motivations and speech habits. Not in this film.....
Anderson is making movies about people...then he populates them with complete non entities. Thats where I have the problem with this film. He wants it both ways, to have it mean something, then not take the work to actually make it so.
So if the shark in Jaws acts like a shark....that makes it okay for this film to have people that dont act anything like people?
Well, no. I prefer to have a movie where people don't act like people than a movie where a shark doesn't act like a shark. The former might be unrealistic (I'm never going to claim that Anderson's films are realistic), but the other is unrealistic in a way where the creators want you to have all this realistic suspense and believe in what is happening on the screen. That, to me, is more wanting to have it both ways.
'Jaws' and 'Moonrise' are completely unrelated. What idiot brought that up?
I really think where we disagree is on the style. I really really like the style, but I have a high tolerance for quirkiness. Cinema is filled with unrealistic characters. James Bond, for example. And a lot of those characters are unrealistic in similar ways (lots of action films, for example). Wes Anderson is consistent with the way he makes those characters which, for a lot of people, is going to be tiresome. I like the unique perspective, and I think the characters, though not realistic, give the movie this flavor that I find completely satisfying. I also like tapioca pudding, but not everybody does.
I do understand your argument that the characters are all the same. To me, that makes things kind of funny. And for a comedy, that's appropriate, isn't it?
From both of your comments, and because of similar movie tastes with Barry, I expected this to annoy me. It didn't. I understand where Barry is coming from, but characters speaking in a similar style didn't bother me because it was amusing (in the same way that characters in "His Girl Friday" speak in a different unrealistic, but entertaining way). I also thought that not only does "Moonrise Kingdom" have a plot, but that it is a very sweet one. Two teens that are misunderstood and not accepted by anyone else find each other. Through their eyes and acceptance of each other, most of the other characters in the movie re-evaluate and come to support them. Because of their love and journey, they will now have a bright future, instead of the troubled future they were doomed to have. Very sweet and optimistic stuff.
Stylistically, I also really enjoyed the film. The camerwork was very creative and fun (love the side-to-side movement), and I found myself drawn to look at all corners of the screen. Almost all of the characters were interesting and the usual Anderson quirkiness actually improved the story, instead of being too much of a distraction. It's like the audience is invited to be in on the joke, instead of the joke being pulled on us.
My only real gripes are with some sucky special effects that are very distracting (doesn't Wes have the special effects budget to make a decent explosion and flood?), and that the story goes a little over-the-top. Other than that, the film was suprisingly cohesive, unique, entertaining, and very touching. A 16.
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