“I hope the roof flies off and sucks me into space.”

From this spot, he would fight them off forever.

Moonrise Kingdom is the latest from Wes Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola. I’m a big fan of Anderson’s but I’m also the guy that doesn’t like The Royal Tenenbaums as much as his other films, particularly Rushmore and The Life Aquatic. I’ve only seen it once, though, so maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. Anyway, a certain amount of whimsy is to be expected from Anderson. He may have seemed to have reached an apex with The Fantastic Mr. Fox but that was more a Tenenbaumsian family saga than the precise, affected outsider fantasies that Anderson does better than just about anyone else. Moonrise Kingdom is perhaps his most sweet-natured expression of that personalized genre of his. The movie is a quirky good time, but you were maybe expecting that.

Beyond the good feeling Moonrise Kingdom will likely leave you with, it also presents a great take on the purity and madness of young love. Or at least, it’s presenting that sort of relationship as being pure and mad (but in a good way, a way that fits in with Anderson’s little microcosms perfectly). Above all, Moonrise Kingdom is about the purity of love and draws a parallel between two sets of unlikely lovers, one full of hope and one doomed to a dim fantasy of romantic fulfillment set aside by adult considerations. Therefore, the young love is to be celebrated for both its essential purity and its freedom from the complications of age, other relationships, and obligation. Which is, in spite of the fantasism at play in the movie, exactly what young love is supposed to be about.