Moonrise Kingdom

The new film by Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, etc.) is a summertime comedy of an exceptionally poetic sort. While it has a big-name cast (Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton), the chief characters are two precocious, gifted 12-year-olds, Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), who fall in love and run away to their own little romantic paradise on the coastal island where they are spending their respective New England summer vacations. It’s pointedly a storybook situation, and in the frisky scenario concocted by co-writers Anderson and Roman Coppola, it blossoms into a wistfully dreamy romantic comedy that also revolves around and beyond the travails and pratfalls of the various adult characters. Gradually, there emerges a sense that the kids are innocent versions of various adults in their lives, while the adults in part remain children amid the challenges and disappointments that life has brought them. But a buoyant comic energy prevails even as the more bittersweet themes weave themselves more prominently into the action. Pageant Theatre. Rated PG-13.