🎬 Movie🏛️ Adults · Ages 18+Coming of Age

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Name: Moonrise Kingdom
Released: 2012

About This Movie

Two misfit twelve year olds fall in love through letters and run away together on a small New England island in 1965, prompting a search party of scouts, police, and parents that escalates into a hurricane. Wes Anderson crafted his most emotionally accessible film, tempering his trademark visual precision with a genuine tenderness for these two awkward, earnest kids. The film looks like a storybook illustration come to life.

Why It's a Classic

Anderson's symmetrical compositions and pastel color palette usually create an aesthetic distance, but here they serve the characters' emotional world: Sam and Suzy's love letters, their carefully packed suitcases, and their beach camp feel like artifacts of a self-invented universe where two lonely children can finally belong. Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, both first time actors, play their roles with a deadpan seriousness that makes their puppy love feel as monumental as they believe it is. The ensemble of adult actors, including Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, and Frances McDormand, each play adults who have lost the certainty that these two children possess. Alexandre Desplat's score, incorporating Benjamin Britten's 'The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra,' gives the film a musical architecture that mirrors its visual one.

Fun Fact

Anderson cast Gilman and Hayward from an open call that attracted thousands of young actors. The fictional island of New Penzance was filmed on locations in Rhode Island. Anderson required the young actors to write their characters' love letters to each other before filming began, and some of the letters used in the film are adapted from what the actors actually wrote. The elaborate flood sequence in the film's climax was achieved with a combination of practical water effects and miniature sets.

Parent Note

The film depicts two twelve year olds in a chaste but genuine romantic relationship, including a brief scene in underwear and an innocent kiss. There is comic violence, a lightning strike injury, and some mild peril during the hurricane. The tone is gentle throughout. Rated PG-13. This is one of the most family friendly films on this list, suitable for older children and adults who appreciate Anderson's visual style and dry humor.