Movie · 2012 · Comedy, Drama, Romance · 1h 34m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 8.7/10 (1.4M ratings)
Overview
Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore – and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle.
Ratings
Curator score: 8.7/10
IMDb: 7.8/10
Letterboxd: 4.03/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 84
TMDB: 7.7/10
Director
Wes Anderson
Production
Indian Paintbrush, American Empirical Pictures
Cast
Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban, Lucas Hedges, Charlie Kilgore, Harvey Keitel, Chandler Frantz, Gabriel Rush, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, Andreas Sheikh, Rob H. Campbell, L.J. Foley, Tommy Nelson, Larry Pine
Curator Review
Verdict
A meticulously staged, bittersweet coming-of-age romance with deadpan humor, visual precision, and a strong emotional current beneath its storybook surface. It’s especially rewarding if you like stylized filmmaking that balances whimsy with loneliness and sincere first love.
Best for
fans of offbeat coming-of-age stories
viewers who enjoy highly stylized visual design
people who like dry humor mixed with melancholy
romance fans open to eccentric, storybook storytelling
audiences drawn to precocious kids and outsider characters
Skip if
you want naturalistic dialogue and realism
you dislike symmetrical, highly controlled filmmaking
you prefer romance without irony or melancholy
you need fast-paced plotting over mood and detail
Overview
Moonrise Kingdom is one of the cleanest expressions of Wes Anderson’s style: precise, playful, and deeply sad in ways that sneak up on you. The handmade world-building, chaptered structure, and carefully arranged compositions create a fable-like atmosphere, but the film’s real power comes from how seriously it treats the emotional lives of two lonely kids who believe they’ve found something absolute.
Worth noting
What makes it endure is the balance. The comedy is dry and exact, but it never undercuts the tenderness. The adults are funny, flawed, and often overwhelmed, while the children are both romantic idealists and believable kids making reckless choices. The result is a film that feels whimsical on the surface and quietly devastating underneath.
Bottom line
It’s also one of those rare movies where the craft is inseparable from the feeling. The color palette, music, blocking, and editing all work together to create a world that seems sealed off from ordinary life, yet emotionally recognizable. If the style clicks for you, it’s enchanting; if it doesn’t, the precision may feel mannered. For most viewers, though, it’s a beautifully tuned bittersweet favorite.
Top Letterboxd reviews
sofi✨ (4.5★) · 11877 likes
-“your girlfriend stabbed me in the back with lefty scissors!”
- “she’s my wife now”
wobbleup (3.5★) · 11004 likes
young lana del rey and jack antonoff did an amazing job
#1 gizmo fan (5★) · 9624 likes
The shot of Sam and Suzy, walking out of the church, in slow motion, with that fucking music, while Suzy kisses his hand, changed cinema for the better.
dania (5★) · 7291 likes
so jojo rabbit is the nazi version of this movie
Peter Labuza (5★) · 6702 likes
I could talk about how this film's structure finally achieves the blissful melancholy that has been at the heart of all of Wes Anderson's films. I could talk about the precision of his framing and tracking shots, and how often he finds visual comedy through a perfect edit, or the slight entrance of new material into the frame. I could talk about how depressing the film is, the hints of both a traumatizing past, and that in a way, Sam… more I could talk about how this film's structure finally achieves the blissful melancholy that has been at the heart of all of Wes Anderson's films. I could talk about the precision of his framing and tracking shots, and how often he finds visual comedy through a perfect edit, or the slight entrance of new material into the frame. I could talk about how depressing the film is, the hints of both a traumatizing past, and that in a way, Sam… more