The Royal Tenenbaums - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: Potentially touching film undermined by mannered style
Review: The first half hour of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS might make you believe that this may turn out to be a terrific movie. Director-coscreenwriter Wes Anderson creates a fascinating, hilarious dysfunctional clan in the Tenenbaums, especially with the three children, who are all geniuses in one way or another, but have all burned out for different reasons. The style of the movie is also initially exhilarating, too: it's presented as a kind of cinematic novel, with a prologue introducing the main characters (via narration by Alec Baldwin), eight chapters, and then an epilogue.

Despite a blazing start, though, the final impression I get from THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is of a movie that strikes me as a too precious and self-indulgent for its own good. This story of how the Tenenbaum patriarch (Gene Hackman), who separated from the family when the children were young, and who reappears and helps to reenergize their lives, could have made more a genuinely touching story. Instead, the story is undermined by Wes Anderson's apparent desire to show everyone that he is such a clever guy. The obviously-composed frames, the laid-back direction of the actors---those kinds of mannerisms all add up to overwhelm the emotional substance of a story. By the end I didn't feel genuine poignancy in the final image---just the impression that, had Anderson dialed down some of the wackier elements of the plot (really, did we absolutely need Richie Tenenbaum's almost-incestuous lust for adopted sister Margo?) and made less of a show out of cuteness and wit, this might have been a much more effective movie. It's rather a shame. Wes Anderson was much more successful in his previous film RUSHMORE in balancing both his idiosyncratic style and the emotional content of its plot. I was truly touched at the end of that film in a way that I wasn't with this one.

Still, I can't say that this is a terrible movie. As in RUSHMORE, Anderson's refusal to descend into insufferable bathos with plots that invite sentimental treatment is admirable. He is admittedly a fresh director, with a distinctive, offbeat style that will probably appeal to some people more than it does to others. And, among its large ensemble cast, there is one consistently great performance in this movie, Gene Hackman's portrayal of the family patriarch Royal Tenenbaum. I'll leave it to others to analyze why his performance works all the way through; for me, though, I just found him a sheer pleasure to watch. He gives such a complete performance compared to some of the one-note portrayals of the other actors that you truly miss him when he is not onscreen. His great performance is not enough, though, to save what is ultimately a disappointing movie, one that is not without its occasional charms but is overall perhaps too self-consciously clever and offbeat for its own good.

Rating:
Summary: This is a brilliant movie
Review: I love this movie. I love the small, subtle moments - the cigarettes hidden behind the brick; the moment when Gwyneth Paltrow steps off the bus and everything slows down; Owen Wilson's pronunciation of the words "obsolete dialect"; and I especially love the character Dudley, not least because I am now able to describe moments of social awkwardness as "Dudleyesque" to those in the know.

I noticed a lot of reviewers here said things like "Didn't get it," and "Wasn't funny at all." Probably like them, I initially thought this was some sort of screwball, zany comedy, because that's what the trailers led me to expect. (I think the words "You'll laugh your pants off" may have been involved, but I might be imagining that.)

I don't think I've ever seen a more innapropriate ad for a film in my life. (Except perhaps once, when the write-up for the long-forgotten train-wreck "Twin Town" was described as the Welsh version of "Trainspotting" - needless to say, it aint.)

This is not "Dodgeball". This is not "Anchorman". This is subtle, intelligent, moving entertainment, seeped in irony. Actually there's such an abundance of irony some ultra-jaded reviewers don't like it for precisely that reason. But if you want something graceful and amusing and a little sly - watch "Tenenbaums". You won't be disappointed.

A little footnote. A month after watching this film - in a bizarre coincedence - I met a guy who, I swear, was exactly the same as Bill Murray's character. He had the beard, he had the jacket, he was a professor (in England) - I'm not sure of what. It was a moment that was entirely wasted, because no-one I was with had seen "Tenenbaums".

Rating:
Summary: 'Royally' Entertaining Farce With A Good Dose Of Drama
Review: I waited a long time after the release of this film to finally see it and I wish I'd looked at it sooner. Wes Anderson is an original artist in a world full of sequels and spinoffs of comic books and TV shows. That he attracts first-rate casts to help him realize a vision says plenty about Anderson's talent. Gene Hackman is at the top of any credible list of "World's Great Actors," and he gives what seems like his 100th superb performance here. As the central figure of the movie Hackman has a lot on his shoulders and he carries it off with style, timing, and heart. The other standouts in the cast are Danny Glover and Anjelica Huston, but really, the movie works best as an ensemble piece: these folks have great chemistry together on screen and they help Anderson (and cowriter Owen Wilson) realize his vision. In addition to being creative and funny, sometimes in an unexpected and silly way, the film is emotionally moving at several points, most of them involving Hackman. The montage with Gwyneth Paltrow growing up as a girl who likes her cigarettes and her men (and women!) is wonderful on its own, but Bill Murray's reaction to it takes the scene to the level of priceless. On the down side, the movie's visual style and structure often are contrived and the style draws too much attention to itself, but these are the flaws of someone learning to develop a vision. Anderson enjoys movies and moviemaking, and we enjoy his enthusiasm as he scores key scenes with well-known and not-so-well known music. My favorite: using Bob Dylan's instrumental from the Sam Peckinpah film "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" for the sequence in which cheeseburger-eating-stomach-cancer-faker Royal (Hackman) gets booted from the Tenenbaum residence. Some might say Anderson is self-indulgent; I think he enjoys popular culture and people and does a fine job of helping his audience share the enjoyment. Now, for the extras: outstanding. Major cast members get interviewed, there are some choice outtakes and a few surprises, and even the covers of books that the characters in this very text-oriented movie have written (for example, "Old Custer" by Owen Wilson's character Eli Cash, a bestselling author with elements of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Richard Brautigan, and others thrown in.). In sum, Royal Tenenbaums documents the emergence of a potentially great director, Wes Anderson. His humor and perspective will not work for everyone, and certain elements of the film feel like inside jokes for those who were involved, but the movie will hold up on repeated viewings. It will also stand as one of the movies that shows Gene Hackman's skills to great effect, and that's saying a lot considering his track record. The Hack-Man puts on a clinic in acting that expresses the symbiosis of hilarity and tragedy that we know as real life.

Rating:
Summary: The Royal Tenenbaums
Review: At first I almost didn't watch this film. I usually do not watch comedies (my taste in humor leans more towards the unusual and/or foreign or Monty Python-like silliness unless it`s SNL which I make an acceptation for most seasons), and names like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson usually dissuade me from watching a movie. But, The Royal Tenenbaums was an enjoyable film.

The Royal Tennenbaums was an idiosyncratic and clever movie without becoming expletively thoughtless and insensitive. The story, which I'm not going to recap here when it has been done much better by other reviewers, is bittersweet and done subtlety. Also, the focus of the movie is on the progression of the characters rather than the plot. The soundtrack is amazing with songs fitting to the actual scene.

I honestly would have preferred this as a book especially the ending. The characters were all well done. Richie, played by Luke Wilson, was easily my favorite despite Luke Wilson's usual blandness. The details in costume and scenery are very reminiscent to the 60's and 70's and very well done.

However, I only gave this movie four stars. It was pretentious and tight-roped between pseudo intellectualism and actual emotion. The story, without it's subtlety, may have been overwhelming with the large cast and cluttered scenes. Also, it was inaccurately advertised which gave people--including me-- inaccurate ideas of what to expect.

Rating:
Summary: It might be a generational thing...
Review: It's tempting to say that some people love this movie and others hate it because some understand irony and others don't. But actually, I think there's a more charitable explanation:

In order to "get" (and love) Wes Anderson, I think it really helps to have been born between about 1960 and 1975. That is: you really need to think of American culture in the '60s, '70s and very early '80s as the time of your lost childhood. For me, the lime-green rotary phone on Raleigh St. Clair's desk is enough to bring me to tears. The Stones albums, the board games, the CP/M Minicomputers in _The Life Aquatic_...Wes loves the stuff that surrounded us as kids in post-Boomer America and is now mostly gone, or kicking around in basements and thrift stores. Actually, I wish I could be the guy he hires to go out and find that stuff. But it's not just material culture; it's the feel of '70s books and movies too, Max Frisch's _Montauk_, John Irving's books, Salinger's stories (okay, they're from the '50s and '60s, but the feeling is there), _Harold and Maude_ and _The Hotel New Hampshire_. We were kids in a time when America was disappointed, but thoughtfully so (for the most part, anyway). Wes understands that.

Note how long I went without using the term "Gen X"! Hah!