- It's difficult to forget the first time you meet The Royal Tenenbaums. The nearly eight-minute-long prologue, narrated by Alec Baldwin and accompanied by a strangely excellent cover of Hey Jude, is one of the funniest and most clever sequences I've seen in a long time, and it perfectly sets the tone for everything that follows. Folks, this is a messed-up family. The patriarch, Royal Tenenbaum himself (Gene Hackman), is clearly the spring from which most of the family problems flow. "I've always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember," he explains, "That's just my style." A style that includes taking some of his children (and specifically not others) to dog fights, introducing his adopted daughter as precisely that, and engaging his brood in BB gun fights where "there are no teams!" For these kids, growing up must have been a terrifying, confusing, and traumatic experience.
- Which is how we end up with the Tenenbaum family of today. Royal's son Chas (Ben Stiller) is a tightly-wound obsessive whose recent widowing drives him to conduct safety drills for two children (Grant Rosenmeyer and Jonah Meyerson) that could pass for clones of Chas himself. Adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a depressive playwright who locks herself in the bathroom to indulge in her super-secret smoking vice, which we gather is just one of many things kept from her hapless psychiatrist husband (Bill Murray). There's also son Richie (Luke Wilson) whose tennis match meltdown may have had something to do with the fact that he's in love with Margot, a fact that he would only share with his Stetsoned childhood friend Eli (Owen Wilson), who fools around with both Margot and mescaline. In contrast, the family matriarch Etheline (Anjelica Huston), archaeologist and author, seems normal and well-adjusted, presumably as a direct result of leaving Royal some years back.
- With a family like this, I'd say you don't need much more of a story. Sure, there is the fact that Royal may or may not be dying of cancer, an issue clouded by the unreliable testimonials of his assistant and sometime assassin Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) and the hotel elevator operator (Seymour Cassel) posing as his doctor, but really that's just an excuse to bring the family together. The same can be said of Etheline's impending marriage to the laughably somber and respectable gentleman (and family accountant), Mr. Sherman (Danny Glover). The rest is just these fascinating personalities interacting in completely crazy ways. Some of the interactions, especially those involving Royal, Margot, Eli, Sherman, or the much put-upon Pagoda are brilliant, hilarious, and immensely entertaining. Others, especially a subplot focusing on Richie's second most famous meltdown, are strangely discordant and serious. When films like this try to mix tones they usually fail, and The Royal Tenenbaums' stabs at solemn drama are weak indeed.
- Despite these shortcomings, it would be remiss of me not to point out just how great of a director Wes Anderson can be. Every shot is exceedingly well-framed, and there are always interesting details hidden in the marginalia. For that matter, the set design in this film features an incredible level of detail and succeeds in creating a well-worn home that really does appear to have survived an entire generation of Tenenbaums and their experimental spotted mice. Maybe the film never lives up to its truly amazing prologue and perhaps the painfully indie soundtrack grated my nerves once or twice, but I will admit that The Royal Tenenbaums is never uninteresting to watch. And every time Gene Hackman opens his mouth, the film quickly goes from not uninteresting to absolutely wonderful.
- Chas' sons are named Ari and Uzi.
- As far as I can tell, Stephen Lea Sheppard (who played Harris in Freaks and Geeks) has only been in two things. This is the other one.
