“Does it concern you that your daughter’s just run away from home?”
“That’s a loaded question.”

For all its twee sensibility and intricately designed artifice—its primary colors, tracking shots, and dioramic sets; its pageants, treehouses, and portable record players; its awkward young stars and physically-present narrator (Bob Balaban)—Moonrise Kingdom is an unexpectedly tender and poignant film. With the biblical story of Noah’s Ark as a rough thematic blueprint, it chronicles the adventures of runaway preteen lovers Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward); the former an orphan rejected by both his Khaki Scout troop and his foster family, the latter a “troubled child” of unhappily married parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand). Having met the previous summer when Sam attended Camp Ivanhoe on the secluded island that Suzy calls home, the two strike up a pen pal romance that serves as a balm to their social alienation, ultimately culminating in a pact to skip town together the next year; a plan which is enacted as the film begins.

Full of typical Anderson quirks like the young Sam taking up pipe smoking or Suzy bringing her cat (as well as canned food) on their myopic excursion, the film ultimately succeeds precisely because its two forty-plus screenwriters (Anderson and Roman Coppola) explicitly frame it from the perspective of its child protagonists, imbuing it with senses of urgency and innocence. In this way, the young lovers’ little backpacking trip takes on the aspect of an epic similar to John and Pearl’s short jaunt along the river in The Night of the Hunter.

As they explore the island, reading aloud to one another, dancing in their underwear, discovering remote idylls, and experiencing true friendship for the first time in their lives, we follow a parallel story of the effort to find them. It’s here that we find recognizable faces—the aforementioned Murray and McDormand, as well as Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), Police Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), Social Services (Tilda Swinton), Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman), and Commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel)—as well as a bit of low-key, heavily stylized action when the incompetent grown-ups commission Sam’s Khaki Scout troop to hunt down the fugitives.

It’s as fussy as any Wes Anderson film—you’ll never for a moment become so immersed in its quaint alternative world that you forget how contrived and mannered it all is—but there’s some real heart to go along with the whimsy and eccentricity.