The Rushmore Script

I liked the Rushmore script very, very much. I think Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson write great stories that pay very acute attention to quirky little details. Little touches like Max and Herman Blume eating sandwiches as they survey the land from a helicopter are humorously endearing. Anderson/Wilson have a way of making normally darker subjects seem at worst slightly melancholy or bittersweet. For example, Max cuts Mr. Blume's brakes at one point, basically trying to kill him. But when it happens in the movie, it isn't dark, evil, threatening, or menacing; it's just kind of juvenile and funny. All the feelings that are hurt in the movie feel real, even when the actual plot or action is ludicrous; the movie is very human in the way it deals with relationships between characters. I especially enjoyed the smaller, less-obvious ones outside of the Max/Miss Cross/Mr. Blume love triangle. Max and his father. Max and Dirk. Even one-scene moments like Max with Mrs. Blume or Dirk confronting Mr. Blume are realistic and touching. I love how age really doesn't matter in this movie when it comes to dialogue. It's funny how mature and serious Dirk is, for example, even though he's 9 years old, and the little detail of the way he writes so articulately, but in blue crayon make his character come alive. Other details include Magnus giving Max shit throughout the whole movie only to reveal that he always wanted to be in one of his plays as well... Miss Cross telling Max she started smoking his age, and then seeing Max smoking occasionally through the rest of the movie... It's the accumulation of small details like that that make each and every character come alive, and the entire story come alive.

There was also an obvious water/aquatic theme. I don't know if that's just an Anderson/Wilson thing in light of The Life Aquatic, or if the water has a deeper thematic meaning.