Artist Rushmore

Rushmore wasn’t Wes Anderson’s first or last film about precocious misfits struggling with (and sometimes against) maturity, but it’s still his best. Anderson’s later movies have seen his interest in production design steadily increase in inverse proportion to his interest in character, but Rushmore is the genuine article, heartfelt and deeply affecting. The screenplay, by Anderson and then-unknown Owen Wilson, deserves a lot of credit for its mix of absurdist humor and genuine melancholy, but don’t forget Bill Murray, giving what is at once the funniest and saddest performance of his late-career renaissance.

Updated 02/01/2010