Rushmore was staged like one of its protagonist's plays. The Royal Tenenbaums, from the same director and writers, is instead a novel, complete with chapters and a narrator (Alec Baldwin). Even more than Rushmore, a quirky film to be sure, I'm not quite clear of my feelings about the movie. It has some very big laughs, but I don't think it's much of a comedy. It's more like a very serious movie with some funny moments in it.
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is the despicable patriarch of a bizarre family of genius, who live in a gorgeous house in a version of New York, with old taxis and phones, that only exists in this movie. He is kicked out of the house when his three children are still young, and they have to cope with growing up without a father, and with their status as revered prodigies. Twenty odd years later all the kids are screwed up, and they all move back into the old house with their mother (Anjelica Huston). Royal tries to worm his way back into their lives with unusual results.
Rushmore's hero, Max Fisher, was a brilliant playright who didn't fit with society. The Royal Tenenbaums is like watching a movie with five or six Max Fishers. Chas (Ben Stiller), is an accounting wiz, Richie (Luke Wilson) is a former tennis great, and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is another brilliant playright. But they are all messed up; Chas is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Richie had a shadowy one a few years back, and Margot is eternally sullen. Add to this scene after scene of failure, terrible parenting, possible incest, suicide attempts, drug use, and death of both man and animal, and you don't really get the typical mixture for comedy.
But the movie has genuine moments of comedy. Owen Wilson's performance as a friend of the Tenenbaums is constantly bizarre and often very funny. Royal is a terrible father, yet he is so good-humored and ready with a smile thanks to a great performance by Hackman, that you can help chuckle along with him at all his bad deeds. And the biggest and best gag is at Richie's crucial tennis match, with great physical comedy from Luke Wilson.
Shifting the pieces of this thing around in my head writing this, I still don't quite know what to make of it. I laughed, and in a few of the scenes at the end, I was genuinely moved by the performances of Hackman and Stiller. But the complaint that it's "needlessly quirky" is probably true, and some of the weirder eccentricities (Like Bill Murray's character's experiment subject) don't pan out, and neither do some of the techniques used to shoot the movie (Nearly all dialogue scenes are shot with the character dead center of frame looking at the camera...I wish I could understand why!). And the New York of the film is cute at points, but it does grate; I kept wishing the Gypsy Cab company had more than the two cars that are seen in the movie over a dozen times.
I guess I'm resigned to say that it's an interesting, if uneven, movie that you should see for yourself and try out. Maybe not on the big screen, but this movie should be seen. Great or terrible, it's far more involving than most movies I've seen this year, and deserves to be viewed for that reason at the very least.
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is the despicable patriarch of a bizarre family of genius, who live in a gorgeous house in a version of New York, with old taxis and phones, that only exists in this movie. He is kicked out of the house when his three children are still young, and they have to cope with growing up without a father, and with their status as revered prodigies. Twenty odd years later all the kids are screwed up, and they all move back into the old house with their mother (Anjelica Huston). Royal tries to worm his way back into their lives with unusual results.
Rushmore's hero, Max Fisher, was a brilliant playright who didn't fit with society. The Royal Tenenbaums is like watching a movie with five or six Max Fishers. Chas (Ben Stiller), is an accounting wiz, Richie (Luke Wilson) is a former tennis great, and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is another brilliant playright. But they are all messed up; Chas is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Richie had a shadowy one a few years back, and Margot is eternally sullen. Add to this scene after scene of failure, terrible parenting, possible incest, suicide attempts, drug use, and death of both man and animal, and you don't really get the typical mixture for comedy.
But the movie has genuine moments of comedy. Owen Wilson's performance as a friend of the Tenenbaums is constantly bizarre and often very funny. Royal is a terrible father, yet he is so good-humored and ready with a smile thanks to a great performance by Hackman, that you can help chuckle along with him at all his bad deeds. And the biggest and best gag is at Richie's crucial tennis match, with great physical comedy from Luke Wilson.
Shifting the pieces of this thing around in my head writing this, I still don't quite know what to make of it. I laughed, and in a few of the scenes at the end, I was genuinely moved by the performances of Hackman and Stiller. But the complaint that it's "needlessly quirky" is probably true, and some of the weirder eccentricities (Like Bill Murray's character's experiment subject) don't pan out, and neither do some of the techniques used to shoot the movie (Nearly all dialogue scenes are shot with the character dead center of frame looking at the camera...I wish I could understand why!). And the New York of the film is cute at points, but it does grate; I kept wishing the Gypsy Cab company had more than the two cars that are seen in the movie over a dozen times.
I guess I'm resigned to say that it's an interesting, if uneven, movie that you should see for yourself and try out. Maybe not on the big screen, but this movie should be seen. Great or terrible, it's far more involving than most movies I've seen this year, and deserves to be viewed for that reason at the very least.