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The Royal Tenenbaums 2001
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Written by: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Luke Wilson, Ben
Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover, Owen Wilson
Language: english
Look for it at the video store under:
comedy
Watch it when you’re in the mood
for
something: artsy-fartsy,
darkly
comic,
whimsical
The critic says:
/
5 the rating system
explained
Fun factor: /5 |
Plot synopsis
Spurred by their
hyper-involved mother, Etheline, the Tenenbaum children showed
prodigious talent from an early age. Chas, the oldest, was the financial
genius, Margot, the adopted daughter, a brilliant playwright, and Richie,
the baby, a tennis whiz – but though all three lucked out in the
talent department, they also shared one stroke of bad fortune: to be
born the children of Royal Tenenbaum – disreputable lawyer, errant
father, estranged husband, and self- acknowledged asshole. Fast-forward
nearly two decades and the family’s early glories have long since
tarnished. Chas finds himself coping with his wife's tragic death,
obsessing endlessly over the safety of his two young boys, and
expressing his sadness in the form of a continuous anger at the world.
Margot, having grown up with a father who made it all too clear that he
never thought of her as a "real" daughter, is completely
unable to form emotional attachments with anyone, most especially her
husband. And Richie, after an infamous public meltdown on the tennis
courts, now floats about on an ocean liner, whiling away his days in
foreign seas as he tries desperately not to think about the fact that he’s
in love with Margot. Royal, meanwhile, long since banished from the
household and no longer allowed to practice law, has just run out of
money, and thus been booted out of his hotel residence. With nowhere
else to go, he returns to the family – most of whom are less than
eager to embrace the patriarch with open arms.
Review
Let me just make my biases clear: I am
totally, completely enamored with Wes Anderson’s work. And like most
people in love, I find it near-to-impossible to see how the things I
love so much about the director’s style tend to be the same things
others hate. I love that weird combination of humor tinged with sadness
that makes it so hard to tell whether you should laugh or cry; I adore
his cockeyed view of the world, in which misfit people hide awkward
feelings behind even more awkward words, and cynicism and optimism,
absurdity and earnestness are all flip sides of the same coin; I want to
live in his hyper-stylized universe of gloriously rich color fused with
the charming clutter of faded objects of quirky beauty. Anderson’s
work has a distinct, eccentric personality to it, I suppose, and if you
don’t like that personality, you won’t like the films. And no
question about it: The Royal Tenenbaums is more mannered and
self-consciously, obsessively realized than Anderson’s previous films,
Rushmore and Bottle
Rocket, combined. Every detail – from the clothes, to the
music, to the wallpaper, ties in perfectly with the story, in a way that
detractors tend to find annoyingly precious, but which makes me just
feel happily immersed in the Tenenbaum universe, a sort of fairy-tale
New York. What makes the extreme attention to minutiae work so well is
that its cleverness never overshadows but instead adds to the real heart
of the film: I don’t love this movie because of the funny way the
characters are dressed, or the loveliness of the sets, or the cool
music; I love it because I love the characters, who, with all
their flaws and weird personality quirks, end up seeming terribly real
to me even when they look and sound anything but. Even when I’m
laughing at them, I can’t help but feel sad too, because beneath their
jaded expressions and glib remarks, there’s always that undercurrent
of hurt and longing, a need to be loved despite all that’s unlovable
about each of them, a hope that they’ll be able to find that love
through a family that’s provided their greatest disappointments. Every
time I watch this movie – and it’s been many; I can’t get tired of
it – I find myself snorting gleeful chuckles from start to finish. But
what’s really weird is that the whole time I’m laughing, I’m this
close to crying too. It gets me all emotional in a way that melodrama
never could. And I love that. —reviewed by
Y. Sun
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