The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Grade: A
Cast: Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Anjelica Huston, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Kumar Pallana, Bill Murray, Alec Baldwin
Director: Wes Anderson
Rated R for some language, sexuality/nudity, and drug content

The greatest of characters can be completely unlike anyone we know, and yet still contain human qualities that we can identify with. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is a film about those kinds of characters. Wes Anderson, director of 1998’s exquisite “Rushmore”, has created a simultaneously poignant and cruelly hilarious portrayal of the dysfunctional family at its most dysfunctional. It’s one of those films that at once seems cold and distant but ends up feeling, sometimes at the same time as its ghoulishness is in full play, real enough to reach out and touch.

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) was one of the worst fathers a kid could have. He and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) separated early on in their children’s lives. They were all known as geniuses, the narrator (Alec Baldwin) tells us: Richie (Luke Wilson) was a champion tennis player until he went into a depression for reasons I shouldn’t ruin; Chas (Ben Stiller), in his early teens, started selling real estate and breeding Dalmatian mice; Margot—Royal and Etheline’s adopted daughter (which Royal never forgot)—was a playwright from a young age. “Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster,” the narrator tells us (as an instrumental version of The Beatle’s “Hey Jude” plays in the background—this is successful because Wes Anderson is one of the directors out there right now that knows how to perfectly compose a soundtrack to fit his films).

Now, Royal, who is pretty much hated by the rest of the family, wants back—and decides to fake an illness to do so. Also important characters: Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), the grown-up kid next door who always did and still does want to be a Tenenbaum; Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), the man who has recently proposed to Etheline; Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), Royal’s loyal servant; and Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray), Margot’s bizarre husband.

This isn’t a high concept plot; it’s mostly about a broken family that one of the members is slowly trying to glue back together. The real brilliance in the film lies within its details. Wes Anderson has created such a visually inventive film that one could pause it at any given time and find subtle in-jokes in the background that are just as funny as what’s going on in the foreground. The production design is quite amazing—every room in the Tenenbaum household has something to marvel at. Not every film is as interesting to look at as “The Royal Tenenbaums”.

But the visuals have nothing on the human element of the film. The easiest character to empathize with is Richie…despite the fact that he’s in love with his adopted sister and that he tries to kill himself in the film. Luke Wilson, never really an actor I’ve admired, does a nice job inhabiting a character that has issues to be sure, but is the most forgiving and caring of the Tenenbaum family. Royal is one of the best characters of film in the past ten years—sometimes we smile and even laugh at his unknowing stupidity, and sometimes we want to stab him in the stomach (Pagoda, in other words, is our onscreen representative). Gene Hackman is part of the reason we realize, grudgingly, that Royal is a charming old bastard. Hackman’s performance isn’t all that different from what he usually does, but it’s excellent nonetheless, because this is Gene Hackman we’re talking about. Outside Royal, though, my favorite character would have to be Margot. Paltrow’s performance is one of the most intelligent I’ve seen from her—she plays Margot to such a low-key effect that you won’t believe it’s the woman who won an Oscar for her jumping-with-joy, cross-dressing lovebird in “Shakespeare In Love”. She’s neither mad nor pleased with Royal’s parental incompetence; she more or less acts like she’s grown to accept it. We understand Chas’ anger (despite the fact that, as played by Ben Stiller, it’s close to being one-note), and the fact that him and his children wear the same clothes throughout the entire movie is a metaphor for the state of emotion he’s stuck in (one of the funniest jokes in the film is what he ends up wearing to a funeral).

That isn’t the only metaphor in the movie, however; unlike, say, “Rushmore” (at least from what I can remember about that film), “The Royal Tenenbaums” likes to elicit our emotions both directly and indirectly, and the outcome is even more rewarding to the viewers that look closer. I don’t have room to list all the other metaphors (that’s not to say there’s too many, but there are just enough), but my favorite comes in the scene where Richie’s bird returns to him. Just as the bird can only be on its own so long without returning to its home, Royal eventually comes back to the family he has always wanted to love but has previously been sadly incapable of correctly doing so.

The only flaws come in the way that two characters are presented: Eli and Raleigh. They are both funny and well-played by their respected actors (Wilson, a co-writer of the screenplay, and Murray, respectively, have the dry humor of a Wes Anderson film down perfectly), but something about them occasionally feels out of place and even forced. I am glad they were in the movie, but I am not convinced that they needed to be.

In walking the fine line between comedy and drama, Anderson has created a portrait of a (not literally) dying family with such power and elegance that it can only be described as brilliant. It’s the kind of movie that has you laughing, and then hoping the characters won’t be offended by your laughter.

Anderson (last year’s real best director…I hope your conscience never lets you forget that, Richie Cunningham) creates a world stacked to its oddly decorated brim with not-quite-realistic oddities; you can picture individual qualities or characteristics of a Tenenbaum in a person in the real world, but the surrounding is pure fantasy. “The Royal Tenenbaums” exists only within itself, and has nothing to do with anything you or I can drive to and look at. The characters have a disconnection from the real world and an un-obsessive seclusion to their own family and few friends, and therefore it is an even greater achievement when Anderson lets us identify with them. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is the best film of 2001—a beautiful, magical, quietly hilarious drama with true emotions and winking laughter unrivaled by any other recent piece of entertainment.


-Alex, August 2002