The Royal Tenenbaums is the 2001 half-comedy, half-drama about three genius siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure after their eccentric father leaves them in their adolescent years.
The father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), returns to them more than a decade later, faking a case of stomach cancer, after he is evicted from his room at the Ritz-Carlton hotel and disbarred from practising law. The film is the story of how Royal Tenenbaum returns to his family to save them from the unexpected wreckage of their lives.
Also notable about the film is that the siblings of the Tenenbaum family — all highly intelligent, disillusioned New Yorkers struggling with their own identities — are loosely based on a rabble of similarly disillusioned siblings from the later books of famed author J.D. Salinger. The Glass family, comprised of seven child-prodigy-turned-adult-misanthrope characters is the central subject of three of Salinger's five published books, and form the basis for the quirky and unhappy Tenenbaum family, as Anderson revealed in an interview with Premiere magazine conducted in January 2001.
Perhaps the film's best trait, however, is its remarkable casting, which includes Anjelica Huston as Etheline Tenenbaum, Owen Wilson as Eli Cash, Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum, Ben Stiller as Chas Tenenbaum, Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum and Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair. Gene Hackman won a Golden Globe for his performance and the screenplay by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award.
A rather off-beat, ironic sense of humour pervades the entire film, as with all of Director Wes Anderson's work, and often manifests in a tone of hilarious tragedy.
Other films by Anderson include Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, which were co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson, and the more recent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach.
Characters
Perhaps the best feature of the film is its characters - some are lovable, others despicable, but all are quirky, and, in an odd way, hilarious.
- Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) - An excellent lawyer but a terrible father, he intentionally shot one of his sons with a BB gun during a game, and constantly refers to his daughter in public as "my adopted daughter Margot." In one scene, he lies hooked up to an IV machine, faking stomach cancer, while eating a cheeseburger.
- Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) - The mother of the Tenenbaum children, who "makes their education her top priority" and helps them climb to fame. Later on, Ethel forms a relationship with her accountant, Henry Sherman, to replace Royal.
- Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) - A genius in international finance, Chas sued his father twice and had him disbarred because of the BB gun pellet lodged between his fingers and the bonds his father stole from his safe deposit box when he was fourteen.
- Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) - A brilliant playwright, Margot ran away from home for a year and came back with half of one of her fingers missing. She married the psychiatrist Raleigh St. Clair and spends most of her time moping in her bathtub, watching television. She smokes, unbeknownst to anyone else in her family.
- Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) - A tennis prodigy, Richie is secretly in love with his adopted sister, Margot.
- Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) - A "friend of the family" since the Tenenbaum children were very young, Eli is the non-genius character who provides a foil for the Tenenbaum family with his burning desire to "be a Tenenbaum," and his later success as an author of Western novels after the Tenenbaum family's fame has already faded.
- Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) - Ethel Tenenbaum's accountant and later romantic interest.
- Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) - Husband of the secretive Margot Tenenbaum and famed (and strange) neurologist. Anderson has mentioned that St. Clair was based on Oliver Sacks.
Taglines
- Family Isn't A Word... It's A Sentence
- You Are Invited To A Remarkable Family Gathering.
External links
Last updated: 10-25-2005 19:49:10
