In a Hollywood where directors like Michael Bay and Renny Harlin follow cookie-cutter templates with explosions and plastic love stories, it sometimes seems as if we're conditioned not to expect better.
Maybe it's because he releases movies only every three years or so, but Wes Anderson -- whose The Royal Tenenbaums opens this week --has so far resisted having his individuality assimilated. He is an odd character with a wonky, bittersweet and ultimately hopeful worldview. And it still shows.
This funny and sad movie, like his earlier Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, was co-written by his college friend, actor Owen Wilson. What's it about? I've read cineastes who say Anderson's films are about characters running comically into their own limitations. Anderson says this film is about the inevitability of failure. One of its stars, Anjelica Huston, says it's about the futility of love.
No wonder his movies are so hard to sell.
In a nutshell, The Royal Tenenbaums is about a New York family of young geniuses who grow up to be messed-up basketcases under the harsh ministrations of their charming, manipulative, emotionally-cruel father Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and the good intentions of their over-nurturing mother (Huston). The kids are the adopted Margot, who is a mordant, prize-winning playwright (Gwyneth Paltrow); Richie, a tennis prodigy (Luke Wilson), and the angry Chas, who's a Wall Street wizard (Ben Stiller).
All of them come back to live together when Royal announces he has only six weeks to live -- which incidentally dovetails with mom's announcement that she's marrying her accountant (Danny Glover).
As befits his enigmatic style, Anderson filmed The Royal Tenenbaums in more than 250 scenes of as little as five seconds. And there are about that many permutations of emotional webbing. Margot cuckolds her adoring older-man husband (Bill Murray). Richie has a forbidden love for Margot. Drug-addled family friend Eli (Owen Wilson) becomes a best-selling novelist in an effort to be accepted by the family of geniuses. And on and on.
The entire thing is framed as the unfurling of an old novel, something like Eloise At The Plaza, replete with retro pastel colouring, extremely-busy framing and a groovy, vaguely maudlin soundtrack (featuring, Niko, The Velvet Underground, The Stones and some seldom-heard Beatles, insofar as there is such a thing).
Each character has their moment to shine. But the movie really belongs to Hackman's Royal, playing the role of miscreant to the hilt. It's the sort of layered role he seldom gets offered these days amid the pile of scripts featuring barking military officers that must cover his agent's desk.
A must-see-twice movie that's difficult to fully appreciate the first time around.
(More on: The Royal Tenebaums ).
(This film is rated R)
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