THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS
Starring: Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Distributed by: Touchstone Pictures

Date: 01/06/02
By: Gerry Wang

    I really don't know how to review THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. At its heart, it is a tragic story of a dysfunctional family torn up by a father's negligence. How could I relate to this? My pops has always been a fixture in my life, and my immediate family (emphasis on immediate; my relatives are Neanderthals) is anything but dysfunctional. But while I cannot empathize with the Tenenbaums, and I certainly can sympathize for them. Everyone in this family is deeply, deeply scarred, and you really feel sorry for all of them.

The Tenenbaums.

    The movies starts out by giving us a glimpse of the childhoods of this family of geniuses. Ben Stiller plays Chas, who at a young age made himself a business whiz; Gwyneth Paltrow plays Margot, the adopted daughter, who became an acclaimed playwright at a young age; Luke Wilson plays Richie, a phenom tennis pro at a young age. However, one underlying thread w/ all these 3 childhoods is the total lack of a father figure, and when the movie flashes forward to the present, these 3 former geniuses are mere husks of their former genius selves.

Wes Anderson's mise en scene was superb.

    Chas grew up to hate his father, and he is an angry soul who's just recently lost his wife and is scared to death of losing all he has left--his two boys, Ari and Uzi. Margot grew up to be a chain-smoking, sullen waif, unhappily married to Bill Murray. And Richie, torn up by his intense love for his own sister, burned out and retired from tennis, taking to the seas to live out his lonely life. Man, everything sounds depressing, doesn't it?

    So it's particularly stunning that Wes Anderson manages to imbue THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS w/ a surprising amount of humor. I'm not talking about slapstick jokes, but little, idiosyncratic nuances that effectively, and often hilariously, fleshes out its characters and story. You get to really know Margot, Chas, and Richie, not only by what they say and do, but by what they wear, how they look, how they decorate their living quarters, what music is playing in the background, etc.

You can't go wrong in a Bill Murray movie.

    The production design, full of vibrant colors and kitsch, sets an atmosphere of quirkiness and irony. There's a lot of pink, from wallpaper to the butler's pants, and this ordinarily happy color is such a stark contrast to the melancholy of each character, that it subconsciously becomes darkly funny. There's another scene where we get to see a small closet filled from bottom to top w/ old board games, aged and dusty, and you get a deeper appreciation of how Etheline Tenenbaum (Angelica Huston) really fostered her children's genius and did a great job of mothering.

    Which ultimately leads us back to half-assed parenting of the absentee father, Royal Tenenbaum, played by Gene Hackman in his best performance I've ever seen. He is the ultimate jackass, someone who cusses in front of children and utterly lacks any propriety or regard for his children until one day he finds out his long estranged wife is going to get married. It is then he realizes he's ruined lives, including his own, with his recklessness and he wants to win back his family.

The scenes w/ Royal and his grandkids were awesome.

    THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is careful not to devolve into "7th Heaven" sappiness though, always maintaining its deadpan, aloof deliver. You see that redemption is ultimately and honestly earned, and this speaks true to real life. If you've ever had a negligent parent, you'll see that you can forgive, but it is your God-given right to never, ever forget.

The one time you root for incest.

Grade: B+
-- One of those love-it-or-hate-it movies. Might be too dark for some, might be too light for others.

Babe-o-meter: C-
-- There were some fleeting boobie shots, none of them Gwyneth Paltrow's, and thank goodness 'cause she's not attractive at all.