By Matt Brunson
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001)
DIRECTED BY Wes Anderson
STARS Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston
Like most of the films proffered by writer-director Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums doesn’t offer the sort of instant guffaw gratification we generally get from American comedies; instead, its laughs are like stealth bombers, sneaking up on us to the extent that we suddenly find ourselves chortling even as we’re wrapped up in the movie’s unexpected air of melancholia.
Gene Hackman heads the cast as Royal Tenenbaum, who, after abandoning his family two decades earlier, suddenly tries to worm his way back into their lives. Matriarch Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is suspicious, but no more so than the pair’s grown children, all of whom were child prodigies before family dysfunction and their own neuroses left them psychologically adrift. Through odd circumstances, both parents and all three kids — failed playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), former tennis pro Richie (Luke Wilson) and uptight businessman Chas (Ben Stiller) — find themselves again living under the same roof, a pressure cooker situation that causes all sorts of messy emotions to spill over.
The efforts of Anderson (co-scripting with Owen Wilson, who also appears in the film; the pair earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay) to punch across his particular brand of eccentric humor are often heavy-handed — the film’s wink-wink self-awareness is abnormally high, even for a hipster comedy — but his ability to make us care about these flawed, sad characters can’t be underestimated. The entire cast clicks, though this is Hackman’s show all the way: Refusing to pander to audience sympathies, he makes Royal simultaneously endearing and infuriating. Come to think of it, the same can be said about the movie itself.
(The Royal Tenenbaums will be screened at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 7, in the Francis Auditorium at the Main Library. Admission is free. The screening is presented in conjunction with The Light Factory’s Family Portraits exhibition. Go here for details.)
This article appears in May 3-9, 2011.
