Edward Norton (front, center) in “Moonrise Kingdom.” (©Focus Features/courtesy Everett)
Disarmingly sweet, Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom’’ at its most appealing focuses on a tween Romeo and Juliet who take flight from their guardians on a small, fictional island off the coast of New England during the summer of 1965.
Played by a couple of gifted and very natural newcomers, 12-year-olds Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) are a pair of misfit pen pals who met during a performance of Benjamin Britten’s “Noye’s Fludde’’ (“Noah’s Flood”) at the local church a year earlier.
Like everything else in Anderson’s film, that piece of music has been carefully selected — we’ve already been told by the on-screen narrator (Bob Balaban) that a historic hurricane will hit the island of New Penzance, and he certainly seems to be dressed for it.
Sam, a geeky, nearsighted orphan and budding artist who lives in an unhappy foster home on the mainland, is on the run from a scout camp on New Penzance presided over by vaguely irresponsible scoutmaster Edward Norton.
Suzy — like your typical 12-year-old girl, more physically and emotionally mature than Sam — is a troubled beauty and devout reader of adventure fiction on the run from her bickering lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) and three annoying kid brothers.
By the time the island’s nominal adults — including the laid-back police chief (Bruce Willis), who’s having an affair with Suzy’s mother — realize they’re gone, the kids have set up camp on the shore of a tidal inlet they rename Moonrise Kingdom.
These are the most magical moments, as they dance to her French records, frolic in the surf, and begin exploring their pre-adolescent yearnings (Sam’s gingerly piercing Suzy’s ears with fishing hooks is a suggestively neat touch).
Resourceful Suzy and Sam draw a bit of blood as they hold off an attempt by scouts who have joined the search party to bring them back. Eventually, though, the sheriff brings them in — though he has reservations about turning Sam over to the fierce woman known only as “Social Services’’ (Tilda Swinton), who plans to put the youngster in an orphanage where he may be subjected to electroshock therapy.
The kids escape again and flee by boat to a scout “hootenanny’’ on a neighboring island, where they are “married’’ by a chaplain (Jason Schwartzman), much to the annoyance of the scout commander (Harvey Keitel, who basically functions as a sight gag).
By this point, the hurricane is finally arriving, and the script by Anderson and his frequent collaborator, Roman Coppola, gets overly hectic, though never actually realistic. When a character is struck by lightning, he suffers nothing worse than a coat of charcoal, like a character in a 1940s cartoon.
In fact, the previous Anderson movie this most resembles is the animated “Fantastic Mr. Fox.’’ While the new film is nowhere near as good as his masterpiece “The Royal Tenenbaums,’’ its whimsy is less forced than “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou’’ and “The Darjeeling Limited.’’
“Moonrise Kingdom’’ isn’t going to make converts of those who resist Anderson’s strenuously curatorial style, where the camera’s primary function is often to linger over the clothing, furnishing and props he’s so lovingly selected.
At his worst, it’s entirely fair and accurate to describe Anderson’s work as twee. But I liked this one because of its young performers, the evocative island setting (filmed in Rhode Island), Alexandre Desplat’s lovely score and Robert Yeoman’s slightly grainy cinematography.
Oh, and Edward Norton’s miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder, which rates close-ups in two separate scenes. Quite a few other period details have been made up by Anderson, who was born in 1969. But I had a reel-to-reel just like that.