Moonrise Kingdom

This movie is perfectly cast.

The romantic leads (the kids) have expressions and attitudes that make them very believable as perpetual outsiders.  Bill Murray and Frances McDormand (whom I hope to be when I grow up) make an entertaining tired couple. She dresses just like my mom did in that time period - yet she has a way about her that always makes her kind of desirable.  (But maybe that's just me.)  Edward Norton is the chain-smoking Boy Scout Leader with Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel running a superior camp across the lake.  Tilda Swinton is the antagonist from Social Services, and, of course, Bruce Willis is the cop with a heart of gold.

Once again, another Wes Anderson film that shows the setting like it's part of a dollhouse.  You feel like you can just open it up and play with all the people inside.  And the kitten.  Everything has a make-believe feel to it from the get-go which comes back to delight us again at the ending.  If a Clooney-voiced fox showed up the in meadow, he would have fit right in.

You can't really trust anything I say about Wes Anderson though; he had me at Bottle Rocket.  It's the kindness that always gets me.  Sure we're all a little broken, but the real test is whether or not we can rise above our own crap to be kind.  Can we be brave enough to work against type, to ignore the masses to do what's right whether that means pretending your brother's breaking you out of the hospital or dancing with a student at a school dance or finally being honest and vulnerable with your family or convincing a pack of kids to help someone they always hated.  His characters know and accept that they're a bit off.  They're genuine.  And even though they're not always moral in the conventional sense, they're truly kind, sometimes in the most difficult circumstances to be so.

Gosh.

A