Moonrise Kingdom

This is a return to form for Anderson, after the wilderness of Steve Zissou and and The Darjeeling Limited. When I saw it the audience clearly enjoyed it, and there was even a half-hearted attempt by the audience to applaud the film at the end, even though most of them preferred to skip the amusing credits. It would be difficult to watch many frames of this film without immediately identifying them as the work of Wes Anderson. We have busy compartmentalised sets, diagrams and boats, all permeate by tongue-in-cheek visual humour.

There is a gold-star cast including Anderson regular Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand and Harvey Keitel. But despite the humour and the cast I was left unsatisfied because the humour doesn't sustain the film. It is a ninety-four minute joke that flags in places. There are some very good jokes, but I didn't really care about what was going on and the cast, with the exception of Bruce Willis who is very good, were required to parody rather than act, so I thought they were wasted. As an Edward Naughton fan I was very disappointed; and Tilda didn't do much for her fee.

I can see that this is a return to form for Anderson who, after Zissou and Darjeeling I had given up on, thinking that he had lost his way. Now he is back on track but I recognize that his track is not for me. All is not lost because I did enjoy Rushmore, Tenenbaums and Mr Fox, but I shan't be hurrying to see Anderson's next film.