Anderson trots out formula

By ROGER MOORE
McCLATCHY NEWS SERVICE

Wes Anderson, the cinema’s Tsar of Twee, takes on young-younger-youngest love and making rebellious square pegs fit into round holes with “Moonrise Kingdom,” his latest venture into the dark and the daft.

And if it’s not as deft as his most adorable confections (“The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”), it’s still got plenty to chew on and chuckle over for initiates in the Cult of Wes.

View more about Wes Anderson’s previous films

It’s 1965, and orphaned Sam (Jared Gilman) is odd-man out at Scout camp. So the smart-but-”troubled” Sam takes the wood lore he’s learned over the summer and makes his escape. He can’t get far. Camp Ivanhoe is on remote Penzance Island off the coast of New England.

But then, he doesn’t want to go far. He’s meeting up with Suzy (Kara Hayward), his pen-pal love who is quietly revolting against her own family on the other end of the island. Her lawyer-parents (Frances McDormand and Bill Murray) are fit to be tied.

Sam’s Scoutmaster (a chain-smoking Edward Norton) organizes Khaki Scout search parties. The other Khaki Scouts – Lazy Eye, Redford, etc., who don’t like Sam – want to know, “Are we allowed to use force?” Suzy’s mom is carrying on with the island’s sole police officer (Bruce Willis). And, as the narrator (Bob Balaban, a perfect surrogate for Anderson) informs us, one of the biggest storms of the last half of the last century is bearing down on them all.

Let the wild rumpus start.

The young couple camp out, with Suzy reading from her favorite fantasy novels and playing her favorite French chanteuse on a battery-powered record player. Enterprising Sam impresses her with his scouting skills: “Watch out for turtles. They’ll bite you if you put your finger in their mouths!” Suzy packed her kitten in her dad’s fishing creel. Anderson, who co-wrote this, must have loved how that looked on the page – “Kitten pokes head through the creel.” The adults get frantic, the storm rolls in, the kids have their violent moments and their acts of remorse.