The Royal Tenenbaums

SnarkAI Score: 85/100

tldr:

The review highlights the film's strong cast, unique style, and engaging story, as well as the subtle use of Wes Anderson's signature elements. The film is described as a grounded and strong story of a family, making it entertaining and worth watching.

Our Scores are generated by SnarkAI's analysis of our reviewer's writing. The tldr summary is drafted by SnarkAI based on that review. All Images are AI-generated based on the reviewer's descriptions of scenes.

---

On the anniversary of Wes Anderson's birthday and prompted by an ongoing TikTok theme of 'X in the style of Wes Anderson we got together to watch one of his most famous films, the Royal Tannenbaums.

One of the most obvious notes, coming off the TikTok trends is this film is not Wes as a parody of himself as he arguably becomes with his most recent films. The combination of his signature style and budget means he has had a tendency to over-emphasise the symmetry and pastel shades he's known for. Whilst these things are present in Royal Tannenbaums, they are not overpowering, but rather a subtle thread woven through.

Set in a New York that seems permanently constrained to the 1970s, the film follows a famous New York family, royalty in the way America does royalty, through celebrity which becomes notoriety over time, as opposed to the UK's more traditional approach of selecting a single family and ensuring the only marry their cousins until inbreeding brings drama faster than their chins disappear.

The three children are all prodigies of a sort, a playwright, a tennis star and a genius for business. Each brings the personal peculiarity you expected from Anderson to the table and as we meet them again in late adulthood their eccentricity has become complete dysfunction. The fourth child, a neighbour follows their path to dysfunction, but as a side character lacks the immunity from the consequences a family of American Royalty has.

The cast is outstanding, Paltrow before she went completely off the deep end of steamed vaginas and alkaline water with acidic lemon and bone broth, both Wilson brothers, Stiller in one of his rare non-comedic roles he should do more of, Gene Hackman channelling his Luthor and the best Morticia Addams we've ever had Anjelica Huston.

The case and script do big emotions, played small. The whole thing is very WASP and big on awkwardness, so much so, it sometimes feels British in the unlikableness of the characters.

Arrested Development is if the Royal Tannenbaums was filmed by cops - Jason bateman

Anderson plays with abrupt cuts, making the transitions jarring and sudden, a visible difference from the common smoothing we often see in feature films.

It's mild and silly as a film until it isn't, an approach Anderson describes as very much his style, perhaps more than the symmetry and pastel colours, is the sudden shift from the quiet to the loud. Richie's suicide attempt comes almost from nowhere, we're conditioned to see a dramatic haircut as both cathartic and cleansing and we assume we know where things are going because we see so little of the real emotions of the characters around us, repressed and hidden, they suddenly rise to the surface and in a red river flow to the drain.

The callousness of the Tannenbaums for those not 'of them' is evident in the waiting room, the boy who is the subject of psychological evaluation and experimentation is left to sit in his bloody t-shirt after finding Richie. No one thinks to engage or offer him new clothing.

Richie leaves the hospital and finds his adoptive sister in his childhood tent, there is poignance and hopelessness in his childhood tent. they acknowledge their shared feelings and their shared sense nothing can happen, despite there being no real reason other than their perception to the constraints they feel.

After a dramatic car crash, where Stiller's children are just barely saved from death by Hackman, there is an off-beat Monty Python chase through the hotel. In a tiny nod to Stiller's ongoing references to his workouts, he easily vaults a wall that later a soldier struggles to even scale.

One of Anserson's more grounded films, it's a very strong story of a family that fell apart years before they admitted it, who spent a decade or two going through the motions, without ever going beneath the surface.

Other Thoughts

Colour-matching Ambilights add a lot to a Wes Anderson film given his use of colour and saturation.

When you close your eyes, it's impossible to tell if it's Luke or Owen speaking.