Upon re-watching Rushmore recently I found that I liked it more a second
time, and the Wes Anderson train continues for me with Moonrise
Kingdom, which I actually found even better than Rushmore. Basically
everything that you could find off-putting about the precocious
teen-played-by-an-adult Max in Rushmore just works perfectly on much
younger characters portrayed by actual young actors in Moonrise Kingdom.
This is probably the most adorable movie I've ever seen. A young boy at
a New England island summer camp meets a girl who lives nearby at
the end of one summer in the 1960's; they exchange letters throughout
the year, and by next summer when he's back at camp they agree to run
away together, throwing the rest of the camp and citizens of the island
into chaos as they try to stop them. It's a cute tale of young love and
rebellion that I'd happily watch again. More Wes Anderson will likely
come as soon as HBO airs it.
Nice to see another guy riding the Wes Anderson train. I saw more or less every movie of his last year, and although there were ups and downs, Moonrise Kingdom and Rushmore felt nearly flawless to me. Also, check out Fantastic Mr. Fox if you haven't seen that one. And just to briefly defend Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore, he was 17 when they filmed that movie - not as young as these kids, but certainly no adult!
ReplyDeleteOops! My fault I guess. I guess I've just always seen him only in adult roles and assumed he was playing younger here than he actually was. Still though Fantastic Mr. Fox was the next one I wanted to see so I'll put in some effort to see that one.
ReplyDeleteUgh Rushmore. I FUCKING hated that movie when I was 10.
ReplyDeleteI didn't like Rushmore when I first saw it years ago, and liked Life Aquatic even less, but this brief re-evaluation of Wes Anderson I've been doing has me liking his movies a lot more, so maybe his "childhood" movies work better at an age when you can actually get nostalgic for childhood. I preferred Moonrise Kingdom a bit more if you're interested in giving him another shot.
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