I haven’t seen all of Wes Anderson’s movies, but this felt very Andersonian to me – a magical little world unto itself, more designed than constructed, with deliberate period sets, meticulous colour palettes, and opinionated cameras that prefer 90° rotations.

On the surface, I had a great time. It’s a hilarious fairy tale, to be sure, bulk of the humour coming from pitch-perfect, deliberate little gags inserted at just the right time. The story of young love is sweet and enthralling, and acted wonderfully by children and adults alike.

In the end, though, none of this feels particularly real or worth caring about. You could suspend a lot of your disbelief for Fantastic Mr. Fox with its anthropomorphic, animated characters… but it’s much harder to do it here – and every time you do, as if being afraid of commitment, Anderson throws a curve ball to remind you that all of this is made up.

I was lucky to have been able to watch this at the famous Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. In a typical Alamo fashion, what greeted us as we were waiting for the movie was a compilation of shorts related to Anderson’s works. One of them was a promo clip for Moonrise Kingdom, with the weary, brilliant Bill Murray matter-of-factly walking us through the sets. I loved it. Leaving the theatre some two hours later, though, I was greeted with a sad realization – if the “making of” is something that feels most genuine, what does it say about the movie?