A young woman and her estranged father sit in an upscale restaurant. In a nostalgic ploy, he orders her ice cream, claiming he wants to "repair the damage." Flatly, the daughter challenges, "I'll bet you don't even know my middle name."
"That's a trick question. You don't have a middle name."
(Instantly)"Helen."
From my seat in the eighth row, I guffaw loudly until the father notes, "That was my mother's name."
My blubbering fills the theater.
Put not so simply, "The Royal Tenenbaums" sits squarely on the border between comedy and sadness, refusing to let you feel only one emotion. This makes for an equally uproarious and touching comedy that has a feel wholly different from most of today's sarcasm-infused comedic romps. In just under two hours, director Wes Anderson makes his audience laugh and sigh while finding what the Jackson family has spent 40 years searching for - a cure for the dysfunctional family. Unfortunately for Latoya and Tito, the cure for the family is ... the family.
Mixing the intensely silly and the heartfelt, this paean to familial dysfunction opens with portraits of the Tenenbaum family: Royal (Gene Hackman), Etheline (Angelica Huston) and their children Chas (Ben Stiller), adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Richie (Luke Wilson). Each child is a genius in their own rite: Chas is a 13-year-old entrepreneurial tycoon, Margot is an award-winning playwright by age 9 and Richie, a world class tennis player at 7. Their promise is boundless until Royal leaves the home.
We rejoin Royal 22 years later. Long separated from his wife and now adult children, he forces himself back into the lives and home of the family he left behind. But is it for the love or the free room and board? The Tenenbaum children, scarred by Royal's abandonment, have matured into emotionally-stunted adults. Working out 16 times a week, spending six hours a day in the bathtub, and cultivating an unhealthy obsession with Bjorn Borg's wardrobe are just a few of the idiosyncrasies that define their adult lives.
|
|
|
Orbiting the wreckage of the Tenenbaum family are Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), Etheline's accountant and burgeoning love interest, and family friend Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), a zonked-out literary hack going through his Hunter S. Thompson phase.
Yet, Royal anchors the film's plot from the outset, initiating the action that gets the other subplots whirling. Royal's lack of social graces and uninhibited, vulgar spirit clash violently with the awkward and mundane lifestyles of his children. This creates the possibility for comedy where moments are not so much seen as felt. The camera refuses to distance itself from the characters' misfortune, comic or not. One such scene comes from Chas' childhood. He and Royal are defending a fort with BB guns. Just as they are about to prevail against Richie and Eli, Royal turns on his son. "But, we're on the same team," Chas cries. "There are no teams," replies Royal in his John Wayne-meets-Homer Simpson manner, planting a BB between Chas' knuckles.
Just as he did in his two previous films, Anderson gets memorable performances from each of his cast members. Angelica Huston does an expert job as the matriarch of the family. She is a loving mother, yet largely unaware of what plagues her children. Paltrow and Luke Wilson's performances are muted yet subtle enough that they appear dynamic. And though Stiller plays his typical role as the angry son with barely-contained adolescent rage, he turns a corner dramatically, having one of the most touching moments in the film.
Yet, it is Hackman's portrayal as the gruff, profane, bigoted but delicately human Royal that drives the movie. He is simply magnetic, delivering every thing from insightful advice to adolescent rants with a comic yet, human quality that Jack Black would have to resell his soul to Satan to attain.
Anderson also shines on his own. His unique sense of cinematography and art direction create a hilariously surreal portrait of New York City and its inhabitants. The bright primary colors and hot pinks that appear throughout only add to the film's novelty. Anderson's fascination with the minutia that fill the lives of the Tenenbaum family adds an additional dimension of humor to some scenes and reflects an eccentricity that echoes throughout everything in the film.
If anything, the difficulty with making a comedy about such emotionally muted people and refusing to mock them in a cold and ironic matter is that at points, the comedic plot must slow to make way for greater emotional impact. Fortunately, there are only a few of these moments and Anderson salvages them with clever camera work and his ability to use props as a subtle punch line. The end result is a lush, moving "traumedy" that speaks to the Jackson in all of us.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
