Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #159: The Royal Tenenbaums

I suppose it would be possible to run into a character from Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) in real life, but the odds of running into that entire family seems next to impossible. The unique filmmaker’s third film ups the ante from his previous film Rushmore, so of course things become quirkier as he further advances towards his current masterpiece The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The Royal Tenenbaums has all of his usual visual styles, musical preferences, and of course two of his usual collaborators, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. The story is very “Wes Anderson,” so if it is your first time watching one of his films you may be caught by surprise, as I was when I first watched it in 2002. The film was nominated for many awards and is described as a comedy-drama, but there not many moments when you will be laughing out loud. As the film open with Alec Baldwin narrating the various exploits of the Tenenbaum children you have to wonder if the whole thing is not some long elaborate joke thought out by Anderson and Wilson his co-writer.

All three of the Tenenbaum children are described as prodigies in their own fields, with Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) being an expert in finances, but for some reason always wear the same red jumpsuit along with his two children Ari and Uzi. Brother Richie (Luke Wilson) is a tennis champion who retired after a meltdown on the court and then spent months living on an ocean liner. Adopted sister Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a playwright who has many secrets kept from the family, and who is married to neurologist Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray, sporting a beard). Finally there is Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), a close friend of the family for years who gained fame for writing Western novels.

The parents of these oddballs are of course equally outlandish, yet patriarch Royal Tenebaum (Gene Hackman) stands out due to his failures instead of his achievements. Whereas his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) is a famous archaeologist and author, Royal is a disbarred lawyer with a poor track record as a father. He once shot one of the kids with a BB gun, can be blatantly insensitive, but compared to the rest of the characters he almost comes off as the normal one, maybe it is because Hackman stands out from Anderson’s material. Yet he has a lot of fun as Royal, especially when he goes out with Ari and Uzi for some fun, which in his mind consists of shoplifting and dog fighting.

The reason for all of these characters to come together is because Royal claims he has developed a form of cancer that leaves him with six weeks to live. He wishes to make amends for his past mistakes, but his children are not quick to forgive or even to believe him. Given past behaviour they probably shouldn’t.

A movie could probably be made about each of these characters separately, but put together the result is almost too quirky for the movie’s own good. What is a first-time viewer of Anderson’s work to make of the character of Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) a family servant who was once an assassin that stabbed Royal?

All of the actors in The Royal Tenenbaums are all very effective in their assigned roles, the writing was so good it ended up influencing both Arrested Development and Alec Baldwin’s role in 30 Rock. However if you are new to Anderson’ world, it may not be the best place to start.

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...

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