#530. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - The Films of Wes Anderson

Directed By: Wes Anderson

Starring: Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston




Tag line: "Family Isn't A Word...It's A Sentence"

Trivia:  Danny Glover, Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson all turned down parts in Ocean's Eleven to appear in this film








The first time I saw Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, I had mixed feelings about it. I thought it was amusing, but couldn't relate to the characters, many of whom were a bit too quirky for my taste.

A second viewing changed that, and what once seemed ‘quirky’ instead took on a bizarre sort of energy, as if everyone in this movie existed in a fascinating alternate reality.

Having seen The Royal Tenenbaums somewhere around a dozen or so times at this point, I now rank it among my favorite films of all time.

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Angelica Huston) have been separated for the last 22 years. With her husband out of the picture, Etheline took control of both the family home at 111 Archer Avenue and the job of raising their three children, Chas, Richie, and adopted daughter Margot.

With Etheline’s guidance and support, all of the Tenenbaum offspring became child prodigies, but their success was short-lived. Chas (Ben Stiller), who had launched several lucrative business ventures by the time he was a teenager, is today a widowed father obsessed with the safety and well-being of his two sons, Ari (Grant Rosenmeyer) and Uzi (Jonah Meyerson). Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a former award-winning playwright, is unhappily married to noted author and neurologist, Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray), while Richie (Luke Wilson), once a tennis superstar, has spent the last year living at sea, reeling from his emotional breakdown one afternoon on the tennis court.

And then there's Royal himself, who was recently locked out of his hotel room.  Having remained close friends with Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), a servant in the Tenenbaum household, Royal learns that Etheline is about to embark on a new romance with her accountant, Henry Sherman (Danny Glover). To prevent this courtship from happening, Royal decides to reclaim his position as head of the family. Unfortunately, he goes about doing so by way of deception, faking a terminal illness and telling Etheline he has only six weeks to live.X Once again under the same roof as his estranged family, Royal may not be the most popular member of the household, but does attempt to share some worldly wisdom with his children, advice that, in the end, might be exactly what they need to sort out their troubled lives.

There's no shortage of eccentric characters in The Royal Tenenbaums, yet Hackman damn near steals the show as Royal, the abrasively dishonest patriarch who worms his way back into the family fold. Yet, despite his obvious shortcomings, Royal is basically a likable guy. In one of the film’s best scenes, he invites his two sheltered grandsons, Ari and Uzi, out for an afternoon on the town. To the beat of Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", Royal and the boys embark on an escapade of hi-jinks as dangerous as they are illegal (he even teaches them how to shoplift cookies and a half-gallon of milk from a corner convenience store).

Sure, Royal is a horrible role model, arguably the worst young Ari and Uzi could possibly have, but he's the perfect counterweight to their father's stifling over-protectiveness, and shows the boys it's OK to live a little.

Everything about The Royal Tenenbaums, from its astute visual style to the expert narration of Alec Baldwin (often overlooked, but extremely effective) is spot-on, and I came to love this oddball collection of characters, whose lives always seemed to be teetering on the brink of disaster.

Enter Royal Tenenbaum, con-man, liar, and crook extraordinaire, who showed up just in time to save them all.