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The Royal Tenenbaums
***
Cinema Releases - March 15, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. 109
minutes. Directed by Wes Anderson. Written by Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson.
Starring Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke
Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Bill Murray, Seymour
Cassel.
The Tenenbaum family, we learn in a breathless
montage at the beginning of this movie, was one of young geniuses back in
the 1970s. Margot had written a Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by the
time she was twelve, Chas was playing the stock market and forming corporations
at a similar age, Richie won three national tennis championships before he
finished puberty. Eli, the kid from across the street, dabbled in writing,
but his real talent was pretending he was a Tenenbaum.
Now the Tenenbaums are all washed up -- Margot
(Gwyneth Paltrow) sits in the bath and smokes a lot, Chas (Ben Stiller) dresses
his kids uniformly and gets paranoid about fires, Richie (Luke Wilson) lives
at sea and mourns over lost love. Eli (Owen Wilson) is making okay money,
but has a drug problem, and yes, he still wants to be a Tenenbaum. The siblings
hardly speak to each other any more, and they haven't spoken to their father
in seventeen years. He's a crazy old devil called Royal (Gene Hackman), and
he now has a plan to reunite his family -- he'll pretend he has cancer, and
sit back as loved ones unite in their hour of grief. Of course, things don't
quite work out that way.
"The Royal Tenenbaums" isn't really
about family life, and the theme of failed genius is really just a gimmick
that lets the movie make jokes about how glum its characters look. This is
a film by Wes Anderson, the guy who made "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore",
and it's another comedy of bizarrely geeky energy. The cinematography contrasts
bright pinks with stale browns, the production design pits 1970s fashions
against a backdrop of 1960s upholstery, the soundtrack alternates between
blithe soft rock and old-school punk, and there's a steady stream of such
devices as title cards and superimposed arrows.
It's impossible to accuse Wes Anderson of falling
into conventionality, but while his film is inventive, I'm not sure that
makes it worthwhile. Anderson bombards us with affectedly eccentric imagery,
obsessively showing off what he can do -- not only can we see the joins,
we're overwhelmed by them.
"The Royal Tenenbaums" is also the first movie
in many a moon in which Bill Murray is no good. Usually Murray seems to march
onscreen and show the other actors how things are done; here he plays a
mean-spirited and morose character, and doesn't even find a way to make it
funny from the outside -- it's just depressing.
Having said all that, I do like this film. The
aesthetics are as interesting as they are annoying, and some of the character
traits give rise to wonderful individual moments. I found myself laughing
out loud quite a bit, particularly at the Hackman character's tactlessness
around gravestones. You'll see what I mean.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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