The Royal Tenenbaums
Review
by : Kyle DuVall
Starring:
Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow,
Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson
Directed by: Wes Anderson
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The Royal Tenenbaums is an extended essay in cuteness and
cleverness by Wes Anderson (Rushmore). Charmingly structured
as a sort of bizarre children's novel for adults and filled
with goofy visuals that work like some sort of comedic zen,
Royal Tenenbaums has some real funny moments.
But as
a comedy film as a whole, especially when stacked up against
Rushmore, Tenebaums, like the family of geniuses in its story,
has some issues. Most prominently, The Royal Tenenbaums is
caught between being a pure ensemble comedy or focusing on
a single central character, and too often it's less concerned
with character than it is with being cute.
The end
result is a film with some very funny elements that lacks
focus and truly complete characters despite an abundance of
silly costumes and affectations.
Tenenbaums
establishes its promising premise and clever structure very
strongly from the beginning. It begins, as all the chapters
in the film begin, with a shot of an illustrated plate form
a nonexistent book of the film's story. The characters are
then introduced in a story-time voice over (narrated by Alec
Baldwin no less..) which pulls us in with its clever narrative
style and dramatic economy.
Son Chas
(Ben Stiller) was a financial powerhouse in grade school.
He has two sons, Ari and Uzi, and all three are always seen
wearing the same outfit: A red Adidas jogging suit with white
stripes.
Adopted
daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) wrote a Pulitzer prize winning
play in Jr. High. Her wardrobe, even as an adult, seems to
be frozen in time, and that time seems to be when Geranimals
clothing was very popular.
Son Richie
(Luke Wilson) was a pre-pubescent tennis champion. He always
wears a John McEnroe style sweatband on his head, along with
the matching wristbands. As an adult his face is masked behind
a shaggy beard and ever-present sunglasses. Lurking under
his normal clothes, one can always see the zippers and trim
of a tennis sweatsuit.
Royal,
their father, was a prominent lawyer. Shrewd and charismatic,
Royal is also completely tactless. When introducing Margot,
for example, he always mentions that she is his adopted daughter,
he takes chas on mysterious fun-filled trips into the city
without including the other kids, and when Royal tells the
children about his imminent divorce form their mother he is,
lets say, less than reassuring.
Etheline
(Angelica Huston) is the intellectually nurturing mother.
She takes care of the kids admirably, making sure they all
achieve their potential, but one can't help but think, emotionally,
she's more like Mr. Spock than Dr. Spock.
This prologue
gives plenty of very funny snapshots into the childhood of
the Tenenbaum family, and when the intro is over, the story
slides forward 20 years, and all the Tenenbaums seem to be
in a rut.
Chas is
dealing with the death of his wife with a paranoid fixation
on the safety of his two sons, Ari and Uzi. Fire drills in
their antiseptic home are conducted with ridiculously funny
zeal, and Chas has the kids working in fitness programs 13
times a week.
Margot
has not written a play in several years and is married to
a loving sociologist (Bill Murray) whom she has absolutely
no romantic interest in. She spends six hours a day in the
bathtub secretly smoking and watching TV. She is also having
an affair with Eli Cash, a prominent Western writer, and Richie's
best friend from childhood.
Richie's
tennis career was cut short after a televised breakdown during
an important match. He now lives on a cruise ship and is deeply,
secretly in love with Margot. Royal has been disbarred (by
Chas no less…) and has spent some time in jail. Since the
divorce, Royal has lived in a suite of the Hotel Belvedere.
As the story begins, Royal is being evicted.
The plot
is finally revealed when Royal cooks up a scheme to get back
in his family's good graces and get a new roof over his head.
Royal tells Etheline he is dying and only has six weeks to
live, and begins to furtively get in touch with the kids.
In the meantime, Etheline has moved Margot back into the house,
Chas paranoid about the safety of his apartment, has also
moved back home and Richie, soon after hearing margot has
returned home and that his father is in ill health, also heads
back to New York.
This is
a rich ensemble premise with interesting, weird, and funny
characters. With all the kids coming home and Royal trying
ingratiate himself with all his eccentric family again, there's
the promise that all these dysfunctional weirdos will be thrown
together and into comedic conflict, and the prologue definitely
makes you eager to delve deeper into these quirky characters.
After
the first few minutes, however, the ensemble feel is lessened,
and the film becomes predominantly focused on Royal, and in
the first act, Royal is the only character we really see develop
beyond the prologue.
Not that
that would necessarily be a bad thing. Hackman is great as
the charming mountebank that is Royal Tenenbaum. And Royal
is a great character. Royal is not just the type who says
exactly the wrong thing at all the right times, he's the kind
of guy who has absolutely no problem with it. Some people
are terrified of putting their foot in their mouth the way
Royal does, but Royal seems to relish the taste of shoe leather,
and his unapologetic frankness is both hilarious and in its
way, very sad. Royal, despite being a very broad character
is not static either. Royal's ridiculously overplayed plot
to get himself a place in the Tenebaum household is just the
kind of scheme we could see this type of old fox cooking up,
but when the whole scheme collapses, Royal is a changed man.
Suddenly, he realizes he really does care about his family,
and now, ironically, their trust in him is at its lowest ever.
At this
point, if the supporting cast has not developed as much as
Royal, its forgivable, because the plot has developed quite
nicely around Hackman's character. Royal must once again ingratiate
himself into his family's life, but now his motives are sincere,
and one has to wonder if Tenenbaum is capable of even attempting
to win back his fractured family's trust by honorable means
and without resorting to crooked schemes. It's a great little
premise.
Unfortunately,
it is at this point in the narrative where Royal Tenenbaums
decides to become an ensemble comedy again, and for about
half an hour Royal, with whom the audience now has a real
emotional investment, gets put on the back burner. Tenenbaums
then becomes centrally concerned on the romance between Richie
and Margot. The problem with this is, with the film's previous
focus on Royal, Anderson hasn't bothered to flesh out his
secondary characters as anything more than walking hangers
for their goofy outfits.
The Richie-Margot
story becomes crucial to the film, but beyond the fact that
she's Gwyneth Paltrow, we never really get a feel for why
Richie is so in love with the sulking, flippant Margot. All
we really know is that the two ran away together and lived
in a museum for a period of time as children. Presumably,
this is when the two really connected, but Anderson never
shows the audience anything more than a few shots of Margo
and Richie camped out under the exhibits to establish this
thread, so their whole romance seems obligatory instead of
sweet and funny.
Of course,
the film does still have its funny moments, but most of these
have less to do with the substance of the characters and the
plot and more to do with the superficial things like Anderson's
gleefully silly use of editing, composition and costuming.
In fact, if you take away their Max Fischer Players-style
outfits, the Tenenbaum children aren't nearly as oddball as
the film would like you to think. They're your basic lifetime
movie of the week family-drama archetypes: Margot is the jaded
daughter who deals with her feelings of fatherly rejection
with a string of meaningless and promiscuous relationships
with the men in her life; Chas is the arrested, bitter child
who deals with the still open wounds of his father's abandonment
by channeling his resentment into obsession with work and
over-compensation towards his own children; and Richie is
your basic emotionally troubled middle child caught trying
to mediate all the conflicts, who just happens to be in love
with his sister. Even Owen Wilson's out-there, peyote-chewing
family friend Eli falls into one of the most familiar comedy
archetypes: the wacky neighbor.
Then again,
a laugh is a laugh whether it comes from absurd montages and
goofy costumes or rich, witty character development, and Tenenbaums
does have sufficiently funny elements, most notably the relationship
between Royal and the family's sedate manservant Pagoda,.
as well as both Owen Wilson's and a sedate Bill Murray's better
moments in their supporting roles.
But you
still really want to see all these characters really develop
and interact at length, not just for dramatic purposes but
because there's so much more comedic potential in this ensemble.
When the film wraps up, you'll definitely feel like you have
seen a funny movie, but you also may feel there was an even
funnier movie that ended up on the cutting room floor in favor
of a lot of window dressing, amovie which comedically explored
all the relationships between all its characters, and didn't
subdivide its plot so much to keep the players from really
interacting.
The Royal
Tenenbaums is still a more inventive and satisfying comedy
than most of the inflated sitcoms that hit the big screen
nowadays, but those hungry for another Rushmore, a movie which
not only made you laugh, but also made you really connect
even with the most minor players, may be a little let down.
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