Supporting Victim: Joel Fuernsinn
"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way." - from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Dysfunctional families are a lot of fun to watch. They're not as fun to
experience but certainly they make for much better stories when talking
to friends. The best way I can think of to describe The Tennenbaum family is to take a Brady Family portrait, subtract some kids, and then have
Edward Gorey or Tim Burton redraw the picture. Edward Gorey is known for his twisted and macabre illustrations that can be seen in the opening
animation of PBS's Mystery. One of his shorts "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" has a nursery rhyme that starts "A is for AMY who fell down the stairs, B
is for BASIL assaulted by bears..." along with appropriate illustrations of the aforementioned children trapped by these ghastly anti-nursery
rhymes.
Royal Tennenbaum (Gene Hackman) is the head of a household consisting of his estranged wife Etheline (Angelica Huston), Chas, an entrepreneurial
son who made a living breeding and selling Dalmatian mice to the Japanese as a teenager, Margot, a child playwright who ran off at the age of 17 and
returned missing a part of her fourth finger, and Richie (Luke Wilson), a tennis prodigy who recently self-destructed on the courts and has been
spending his time on a cruise ship, touring the oceans. Secondary characters include Bill Murray as Margot's husband, Danny Glover as
Etheline's accountant and suitor, and Owen Wilson as Eli Cash, a childhood best friend of Richie and currently a perpetually stoned writer of schlock
westerns. The children have all grown up now but have the physical and emotional scars of their rather odd childhood experiences that are related
to us in little vignettes by the narrator (Alec Baldwin).
The movie begins when Royal is evicted from the hotel where he has set up residence for the last 20 years because of his inability to pay his bills.
He, with the help of Richie and Pagoda (Kumar Pallana), the family's servant contrive to move him back into the family home, a three story
apartment slightly infested with a colony of Dalmatian mice. For a variety of wacky reasons, the other children, Chas and Margot, have
decided to also move back in to the home temporarily. The volatile mix of all the family members being under one roof again motivates the rest of
the story in the typical family movie formula of resurfacing emotional pain, confrontation, discovered secrets, growth and maturation, healing
and reconciliation, and finally a resolution.
I enjoyed the entire presentation. The director, Wes Anderson, treats the "The Royal Tenenbaums" as a book (and indeed, as each chapter is opened by
the narrator, we see the pages open to relevant chapter in a book on screen). There are scenes that are designed to be book illustrations such
as one showing the children looking out onto the street, one from each floor of the apartment. The acting is excellent, as one would expect from
this seasoned cast. But what I particularly liked was the wicked and satirical humor of the story co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson (who
knew he could write?). The writers give the Royal Tennenbaums an exaggerated sense to their characters and problems but not so much that
they become unrealistic caricatures as one might find in a mainstream comedy. As such, the movie comes very close to delivering the feeling you
get when you're listening to a friend talk about some wild family member's latest scandal. It's possible that I enjoyed the story more because I was
seeing it after the gaudy and shallow ornamentation, both commercial and sentimental, of the winter holiday season. Seasonal cynicism or not, I
appreciated its balancing contrast to the romanticized family portrait that is beaten over our heads for commercial and political
reasons.
I give "The Royal Tennenbaums" a 7 out of 10 on the Good Movie Scale. It's not likely to be an Oscar contender because of its black nature but
it may pick up one or two nominations in odd categories. It is a funny movie with a great cast, a good story, and definitely worth watching if
you enjoy dark comedy. This is not a movie you go to see to get a lot of whiz-bang laughs or a warm fuzzy feeling. What you will get is
astonishment, an occasional flash of recognition, respect for the audacity of certain characters, and, hopefully, a profound sense of relief that the
elements of your own life are probably more ordinary than its screen analogues.
