3/4  Strange But Endearing
This movie is not one the general masses will find entertaining. Its full of eccentric and bizarre characters who are rivaled only by the strange story. However, I really like this film. It has many funny moments and subplots. If you ha... (read full)

2.5/4  A director disappearing up his own a**
The Royal Tenenbaums isn't a bad movie. It's just not a terribly good one. I love Wes Anderson's first two movies Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. Both were extremely clever and witty without being too pretentious. RT on the other hand, is slig... (read full)

4/4  To all the ones I've loved before...
Best Characters: Margo Tenenbaum

I love this movie so much, I wish I could live in this world. The cast and direction is utterly superb. My only regret is that the DVD features are not that great, but I saw it in the theater twice and e... (read full)

4/4  By far Wes Anderson's best movie
As close to perfect as they come. Not a moments wasted, so much so that it kind of rushes past you at times. The cast is absolutely awesome ofcourse. It's a shame that Bill Murray gets such a minor bland role. Everyone else is perfectly ca... (read full)

1.5/4  The Royal Tenenbaums Quick Review
Strange movie. Some funny parts but overall I have to be in the mood to watch it. It has its moments but overall, not one of the best for any of the cast.

3/4  The Royal Tenenbaums Quick Review
I think it's great, the way that this dysfunctional family comes together. I enjoy Wes Anderson a lot and this movie is no exception.

1.5/4  The Royal Tenenbaums Quick Review
Yeah. No. I don't approve Wes Anderson. He's a pretentious filmmaker, trying to make a point where is not. My family sucks, so what? All of his films are overrated. Good casting, though.

3.5/4  The Royal Tenenbaums Quick Review
The highlight of Tenenbaums is its truly talented cast of the most dysfunctional family on film. If you approve of Wes Anderson's quirky nature - you will thoroughly enjoy this film.

5/5 top 10
  by Holland Crosby (Fremont, CA)
Royal Tenenbaums has to be one of my favorite movies ever. This is one of those that always makes me laugh yet has a great drama tone to it too. I have watched it too many times to count and yet never get tired of it. I guess I am a Wes fan though because it seems people either hate or love his movies, and I love them!

5/5 Tell me a story. . .
  by Crabby Old Lady (North Carolina)
Tell me a story...


The Royal Tenenbaums is a film that could have started out as a book, one of
those books, like Harry Potter, that has illustrations so that you can imagine the characters mostly for yourself, with a bit of help from the author.

As the story is not in fact from a book, I am going to say that it is like a snow globe, a tiny universe that makes sense if you press your nose up against the glass and squint.

Without the narrator (Alec Baldwin), you would be completely lost. Some people are completely lost anyway, given the number of factual errors that occur in the reviews printed here.

A brief summary: The story starts with all of the Tenenbaum children, who appear to be in their thirties, moving back to their mother's home, a castle-sized house located somewhere in New York. Explanations are skimpy for this at best. At the same time, across town, their father, estranged from the family for years, needs a free place to stay.

So, for the first time in 18 years, all of the Tenenbaums are together under one roof.

The mood of the film varies like the weather. Sometimes it is beautiful and sunny; sometimes it is grey and snowing.

Flashback to 18 years ago: Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) is a successful litigator, his wife, Etheline (Angelica Huston) an anthropologist, the three children are prodigies:
Ritchie (Luke Wilson), a tennis champion
Chas (Ben Stiller), a wizard at business
Adopted daughter Margot (Gweneth Paltrow), a successful playwright

The marriage breaks up, the children grow up but not well, Etheline dates but does not remarry, in fact, she and Royal are still not divorced.

What little action there is seems to be spurred by Etheline's deciding to get married again (to her accountant, played hesitantly by Danny Glover). Royal's competitive juices, so long dormant, are revived, and he stages a play for Etheline's love and sympathy by pretending to be dying of cancer (despite eating a lot of cheeseburgers).

The deus ex machina, that moves the story along to completion, is provided by a family friend called Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), who is presented as a drug-addicted novelist but who is really addicted to the Tenenbaum family.

In contrast to the narrator, who gives a perfectly flat delivery, the music functions as a barometer of affect for each scene.

Don't expect to get it all the first time; pick up this snow globe and give it another shake.












5/5 The Royal Tenebaums
  by Susan Hunter
Another "strange" movie for you collection- a must have. This movie has the younger version of all these actors, it's really a good movie about the Tenebaum family and the disfuction of family life.
Brilliant & entertaining.

1/5 I don't get it...
  by inframan (the lower depths)
Couple WASP dudes doing Woody Allen? (I recast it with Woody's people - you know, Mia as the zombie sister, Meryl as quirky kewt mom....)
Film form of Thorazine?
Class project?
It's the kind of movie that I've forgotten the beginning of before even getting to the middle. It has to have an end but I'll never get there at this rate.


4/5 THE ROYALLY DETACHED...
  by Geary A., Jones
Anderson's witty take on a family of misfits is hilarious, but laced with an ingenious empathy for his disparate ( and, indeed, 'desperate' ) characters. The patriarch of this dysfunctional group of shrink-fodder is Royal Tenenbaum ( Gene Hackman ), a near, non-entity as a father, and his wife ( Angelica Huston ), is an archaeologist ( for the Transit Authority... ), that barely seems to have a pulse. All three of their children ( played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, and Ben Stiller ) had been prodigies, that have suffered loss of either talent, or a loved one, but are as incapable of dealing with their loss, as they are of responding to one another in any perceptibly rational way. When Royal schemes his way back into the family home after being kicked out of his hotel, the family is brought back 'together.'

I enjoyed the dialogue in this satirical bit of family dystopia, more than I did the somewhat convoluted plot, and the characters were fascinating. Definitely fun.