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Beyond dysfunctional
[Photos: Touchstone Pictures]
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman, right) feigns an illness in order to move back in with his family, upsetting his son Chas (Ben Stiller, left), grandchildren Uzi (Jonah Meyerson, center left) and Ari (Grant Rosenmeyer, center) and daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow, center right) in The Royal Tenenbaums. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 3, 2002
If ever a more talented, screwed-up family existed, they couldn't be more amusing to watch than Wes Anderson's Royal Tenenbaums.
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The films of Wes Anderson convey absurdity with such sincerity that it's hard to believe such lunkheads don't exist. His first two movies were populated by lovable underachievers: small-time crooks convinced they're masterminds in Bottle Rocket and a lousy student skating through Rushmore academy on gall that's ready to blow up in his pimply face at any moment.
Not so with The Royal Tenenbaums, a family raising the bar on dysfunctional lifestyles. These are smart people, actually geniuses who have excelled in ways financial, artistic and athletic of which others only daydream. They've also failed miserably at the one thing everyone has a shot at accomplishing: being happy.
The patriarch, Royal (Gene Hackman), bailed out of this loony bin years ago and now wants to make amends. Royal attempts reconciliation the same way he always succeeded in business: with lies. He tells his family he's dying of cancer, thinking that will encourage enough sympathy to enable a move back home. Fat chance.
Royal's ex-wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is getting along nicely without Royal, even finding love again with a stuffy colleague (Danny Glover). The three Tenenbaum children couldn't care less if Royal dies. He shoved them into brilliance at early ages, after which they peaked young and aged without ever matching their accomplishments -- or surpassing their maturity -- as child prodigies. It's probably their own faults, but Royal is easier to blame.
C
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman, foreground) takes his grandchildren for a day outside, away from the watchful eye of their overprotective father in The Royal Tenenbaums.
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has (Ben Stiller) is the prickliest failure, a guy who never knew how to harness an intellect that could invent Dalmatian rats or run a Fortune 500 enterprise from his bedroom. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a tennis ace until an unbelievable meltdown at the U.S. Open pushed him into self-exile on the high seas. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was adopted, so failure isn't genetic. She earned raves at age 14 for writing a play that made Sylvia Plath seem cheery. Now she is Sylvia Plath.
The comedy behind all this neurosis is found in the details Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson pack into the film's quasidocumentary approach. Every comedy gives its characters quirks but seldom so many and rarely so well-defined. Not exactly punch lines, but little sparks of awareness geared to knowing smiles rather than belly laughs. A deadpan prologue dryly narrated by Alec Baldwin sets up Anderson's droll manner, sketching a past that makes the present so uncomfortable for the Tenenbaums.
The humor is so fragile, and the characters so initially unappealing, that the only way The Royal Tenenbaums succeeds is through its actors. Hackman is terrific as Royal, a certified jerk whose basest instincts can be overlooked because he's trying so hard to do the right thing and doesn't know how. Paltrow's glumness becomes a magnetic presence. However, Stiller's uptight shtick gets a bit tiresome here, and Luke Wilson's expressionless style is further muted by long hair, a pathetically retro headband and sunglasses.
As usual, Anderson finds some redeeming humanity in the secondary characters. Huston and Glover share some sweetly almost-romantic moments. Royal's racist feelings about an African-American possibly taking his place bring out Glover's quietly effective dignity. Bill Murray pops in occasionally as Margot's timidly desperate husband, but the role isn't as vital as his Rushmore triumph. Owen Wilson steals his share of scenes as the Tenenbaum siblings' lifelong friend, now relishing celebrity as the author of truly bad Western novels.
Watching Anderson set up these personalities with sight gags and sly writing is always amusing. The problem with The Royal Tenenbaums is its third act, when everyone's problems come to resolution in defiance of everything we've seen to that point. These people don't deserve or apparently know how to achieve happy endings. It's a bit of a copout, dulling what should be admired as the feel-bad comedy of the season.
The Royal Tenenbaums
- Grade: B+
- Director: Wes Anderson
- Cast: Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Bill Murray
- Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson
- Rating: R; profanity, sexual situations, brief nudity
- Running time: 108 min.
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