The movie is stocked with a (mostly) endearing cast, all but a few of whom seem to be on Xanax. The only ones who seem awake -- and therefore make an impression -- are Gene Hackman as the gleeful, nearly unrepentant asshole Royal Tenenbaum, and Ben Stiller as one of his sons, who's a ball of inchoate rage stemming from his father's neglect and augmented by paranoid overprotectiveness of his sons due to a plane accident that killed his wife. Owen Wilson has his moments of low-key charm as a Tenenbaum neighbor, though his most valuable contribution to the movie is the art in his apartment (check out the little sketch of a pair of tighty-whities). The rest of the cast is just unreadably deadpan, Gwyneth Paltrow in particular: she looks like an Edward Gorey illustration of ennui, with her raccoon eyes and chain-smoking lassitude, but it's hard to figure out why and to reconcile the snippets of her sexual adventurousness that we're shown with her sulky exterior.
But it's worth seeing the movie just for Hackman's performance. He's a pure delight as scheming patriarch Royal, who ditched his wife and kids decades ago but now -- broke and homeless -- wants to weasel back into their good graces. Of course, the man would be a right bastard to have in your own family, but it's somehow adorable to watch him take little kids to dogfights. He clearly had a great time making the movie, and he's got the sort of evil joie de vivre that you just don't see enough of these days. It's kind of a letdown to see him reform (plus, he does it so suddenly that it feels like another con, only this time on the part of the filmmaker instead of the character).
Though lots of reviewers have raved about Anderson's originality and/or compared him to Woody Allen, Tenenbaums reminded me more than anything of The Hotel New Hampshire. Maybe it's the incest thing (though Anderson cops out and makes it between adopted siblings), or the child prodigies, or the unrelenting yet somehow static quirkiness, or the dogs-who-survive-plane-crashes (well, the dog in THNH doesn't exactly "survive," not having been alive when it got on the plane, but... Sorrow floats). But Tenenbaums offers no words to (literally) live by, like, "Keep passing the open windows," and though you could guess pretty easily at the roiling emotions that prompt some of the characters' actions, you rarely actually see them, which is kind of a mistake in a "motion picture."
Still, Tenenbaums is funny and entertaining. My advice is to ratchet down any expectations that might have been pumped up by Rushmore or critics' praise and to enjoy the movie for what it is without imagining what it might have been. (I'm not sure how many of you besides me would have these problems....)
Back to homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search