The Royal Tenenbaums
Touchtone, 2001
Directed by Wes Anderson

$$$

Just because you're a genius, it doesn't mean you can figure out how to have a functional family life. That's the gist of The Royal Tenenbaums, a wonderfully quirky comedy from the makers of wonderfully quirky comedies: Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson.

The pair last collaborated on Rushmore (Wes co-writes and directs, Owen co-writes), and like that previous effort, the focus is youngsters who are wise beyond their years. Either by luck, or good genes, all three Tenenbaum siblings turn out to be geniuses -- as a result, growing up in New York City, they gain minor celebrity. There's Chas, the child entrepreneur; Margot, the prodigy playwright; and Richie, the tennis phenom. But their father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), a high-powered attorney, is a royal jerk who shows them little love and support. He shoots Chas with a b-b gun and constantly points out the fact that Margot is adopted. Eventually, he divorces their mother, Etheline (Anjelica Houston) and pretty much disappears from their lives altogether.

Two decades later, he elbows his way back into their lives. He announces that he's dying, and wants to set things right. Trust me, this is all funnier than it sounds.

Soon, the Tenenbaum children are all back under the same roof. Chas (Ben Stiller) is a widower who's become maniacally overprotective of his two sons. Margot is married to an older man (Bill Murray) and spends her days the bathtub sulking in depression. Richie (Luke Wilson) is retired from the pro-tennis circuit (the flashback to his nervous breakdown during a match is hilarious).

They move back into their old rooms, revisiting their childhoods with more dread than fondness. But in the process, with Royal's help, they each finally find what they need to achieve happiness. The movie is at times tender, at times wicked.

The setting is 2001, but the costumes and the production design are all circa 1978. And there's a method to the madness. Revisiting childhood is a major theme and almost every frame of The Royal Tenenbaums looks like an old childhood photo. Chas and his boys wear matching red Adidas sweat suits with white stripes. Richie sports the long hair-with-headband look of Bjorn Borg. Royal wears huge, thick-framed glasses. The music also evokes another era.

As in Rushmore, Anderson assembles an incredible soundtrack of '60s and '70s pop songs. The music is nearly continuous, and each song beautifully underscores each scene.

Stiller is in his familiar comically over-the-top intense-guy mode. Paltrow gives one of the best performances of her career. But the real story here is Hackman. He's magnificent. He makes his character a real louse, but he also makes us sympathize with him.

Anderson and Wilson (who also co-stars as a childhood friend of the Tenenbaums) make us laugh at circumstances that you wouldn't normally think of as funny -- regret, estrangement, etc. But the filmmakers are able to derive humor from these situations because many of characters, scenes and moments ring true to a certain degree.

We all have families. We all can relate to the Tenenbaums a little bit. But hopefully we can't relate too much.
(c) Copyright 2002