Wes Anderson’s offbeat comedy was acclaimed highly by some critics, and completely ignored by others. This is a film that I think will become a cult classic in the years to come because it is so hilarious and yet sincere, but somehow managed to fall under the radar of the mainstream Hollywood press despite its spectacular cast. Listen to the cast list and see if you are as amazed as I was; Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelica Huston, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, and Danny Glover. Whew! How could a movie with more stars in it than your average Star Wars flick be passed over by the media? My opinion is that the press saw the film and thought, “There is no way in hell that the average American will get this movie.” To be perfectly fair, they were probably right; the humor in The Royal Tennenbaums is not very typical of modern American comedy. There are very few sex jokes, no bathroom humor to speak of, and not even one of the characters has any sexual contact with a pie. How can it possibly funny, you may ask? The script, penned by Anderson and Owen Wilson, reverts to comedy about life, the way we live it, the way we look at it, and the way we deal with our problems. It also contains some of the best use of awkward pauses I’ve ever seen. Some of the biggest laughs don’t even come from a line but rather the lack of a line. The characters are very real, not the over-witty, perfectly ironic characters we usually see in movies. Rather than trying to come up with some weighty, moving comment in an important scene, the characters don’t really know what to say, so they savor the moment and stare in silent thought. This is the way real people act; this is how things really happen in real life, and what better place to draw comedy from than real life. The movie follows Gene Hackman as a once rich businessman whose three children were all prodigies and should have gone on to great, successful careers but who ultimately ended up bottoming out and failing like their father. When the children have all grown up and gone away to lead separate lives, their father tells everyone that he is dying in order to reassemble his broken family and try and patch things together. The children all hate him, of course, so their reactions to him and their conversations are all rather entertaining to watch. Gene Hackman’s character appears at first to be a very deceitful, low-life bum but as the film goes on we learn that he is at heart a truly beautiful and sincere man who just wants his children to be happy again. Unlike other similar characters in other movies, he doesn’t want anyone to love him or appreciate him or even to respect him, he just sincerely wants better lives for the people he loves, whether they are good to him or not. His love is heart-warming and touching and makes this one of the best family comedies of all time. This is certainly the best comedy (live-action, that is) of the year and makes my top ten of 2001.