Childhood is so precious. When we look back at our youth through film, as a means of processing memories through the lens of childhood wonderment, we can forego all the other things a movie usually is. We can focus on the sentimental simplicity of moment-to-moment innocence. Life through a child’s eyes. Saccharine-sweet, pretty but empty. The colors sing, held in by the careful symmetry of how the movie is shot, 16mm and precocious, like Wes Anderson and yet nothing like Wes Anderson.
Wes Anderson’s style may be immediately identifiable and you may know when another movie is aping it but you will always be able to tell when he’s the one making the movie because the imitations flatten so much of the feeling down to an aesthetic purpose. Wes Anderson movies, not to belabor the derisive comparison, are also fulfilled by themes and driving motifs, the style meets the substance of the piece. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is not just a beautiful movie made out of dollhouse components, it’s a movie where the compartments of each space are unpacked, and create in each diorama the believability of a wider cinematic world inside each sequence. Riddle of Fire, meanwhile, sits cozily within the mold of Moonrise Kingdom, but suffers from its own airy, precocious lightness.
The idea is to create a neo-fairytale from a child’s perspective. That is a very valid proposition. Colorful and ostentatious, launching into the blooming Springtime, the movie is all suitable aesthetic and not much there to meet it. The story is straightforward stuff: the children explore the woodlands of Wyoming in search of the perfect blueberry pie for their mother. On their adventure, they’re side-tracked by all manner of fairytale incarnations — fairies, poachers, huntsmen, and witches — and it’s a comradery-building friendship fable about the rewards of adventure.
Certain audiences will bask in the aesthetic pleasure and it will be enough. Structurally, though, the story plunders some of its potential. The acts are not organized, there isn’t much of a throughline between the first, second, and third acts. Eventually, it’s a collection of speckled eggs, paintball colors, and Easter symbols, a reflection of childhood, but without very much material depth beyond the surface. And yet, it’s pleasant and nauseatingly sweet. Someone’s going to feel right at home in that sort of nostalgic tour of childhood emotions, but it won’t be everyone, and it’ll just be a matter of if the lovely 16mm approach is enough or whether the film gets a bit too lost in the woods of its presentation.