70) The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)


Director: Wes Anderson

Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Bill Murray, Kumar Pallana, Grant Rosenmeyer, Jonah Meyerson


Kate and I had a rare Saturday evening at home together so we decided to get some pizza and watch a movie (Kate doesn't watch movies as much as I do and I'm always happy to watch another). We settled on The Royal Tenenbaums. I'd seen it before maybe five years ago and since watching Fantastic Mr. Fox was keen to give it another look.

Various circumstances lead three grown up prodigies, Chas (Stiller) the finance whizz, Margot (Paltrow) the playwright and Richie (Luke Wilson) the tennis champion, to move back in with their mother Etheline (Huston). Their long estranged father Royal (Hackman), hearing that Etheline is considering remarrying, decides he wants to make amends with the family so under the guise of dying from cancer, moves back in. With the family all under the same roof for the first time in years a number of repressed issues start to come to the fore.

This doesn't sound like a typical basis for comedy, but that is because Wes Anderson doesn't make typical comedies. One of the most impressive things about The Royal Tenenbaums is the way in which it plays at multiple emotions. Unlike most comedies which operate in a single gear, Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson are trying to engage a number of different emotional responses. Thus the film has moments of big laughs, but also some quite somber moments. Amidst the quirky goings on of the Tenenbaum family, Richie's suicide attempt packs a really heavy punch. While other comedies may try and have serious bits in them, what is impressive about this film is the way in which the story doesn't even move from one mode to the other, but rather allows them to co-exist. This way you can have multiple layers to any given scene, with the presence of comedy not necessarily undermining the seriousness of what is happening. Anderson and Wilson rightfully received an Oscar nomination for their screenplay.

This was Anderson's third feature film, and his third writing collaboration with Owen Wilson. After turning a short film they made together into the feature length Bottle Rocket, Anderson really made people take notice with the critical success of Rushmore in 1998. None the less, the cast that has been assembled for The Royal Tenenbaums is absolutely incredible for a director only making his third feature. For starters you have two time Oscar winner Hackman in the title role. I can't praise this performance highly enough. In a Golden Globe winning performance (the Oscars very rarely take note of comic performances), he displays all his usual skill for playing ambiguous character while also showing a real flair for comedy which we don't see very often from him. The cast also includes Oscar winners Anjelica Huston and Gwyneth Paltrow. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson would both have been bankable stars on the back of Zoolander. Bill Murray is a highly regarded comic actor. Luke Wilson and Danny Glover are no slouches. He even got Alec Baldwin to narrate it. Major studio comedies would dream of a cast like that, but Wes Anderson just seems to have a knack of being able to attract big names to his projects.

Equally as impressive as the cast is the soundtrack. Music has always been an important part of Wes Anderson's films. As well as original music composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, the soundtrack includes songs by artists including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, the Clash, the Velvet Underground, John Lennon and Van Morrison. Those kinds of names don't come cheap, and while you can understand that an actor might work for below their market value if they believe in the film, I'm not sure that music rights are as easily negotiable. So it wouldn't surprise me if a larger than usual proportion of The Royal Tenenbaums estimated US$21million budget, which is not all that much for a Hollywood film, but would have been a big step up from the budgets of his previous films, went into music. But it is worth it. Anderson is really good at using music to set the tone of the scene, and not just through specially composed music. The use of the Beatles' 'Hey Jude' under the films introduction just works beautifully in establishing this family of weird and wonderful characters.

Like all Wes Anderson films you are either going to love it or hate it. Wes Anderson makes Wes Anderson movies and you either click with his quirky style or you don't. If you are someone who does, then The Royal Tenenbaums is a real treat. If you are someone who doesn't, then it will just seem like more of everything you hate about Wes Anderson. If you aren't familiar with his work, it's worth having a look and finding out which camp you are in.