Committing to The Royal Tenenbaums is like giving time to a girl who openly admits masturbating on the pages of Outdoor Life and Field & Stream magazine. Those bright orange vests work in stimulating that erogenous zone into submission. An intriguing read at first, her practice quickly grows tiresome, yet her core soul remains lovable into marriage. There's this overwhelming vibe of greatness associated with Wes Anderson's new quasi-masterpiece, wrapped like a pancake around sausage. Geeky practitioners in the art of watching superior cinema have staked a claim in its goofy weight. They say it's the best film of the year. If you don't like it, there's something wrong with you.
At the midway point, as I was growing ennui with the on-going accounts of Royal's story, I had to wonder what was wrong with me. Tenenbaums didn't seem very funny. I wasn't laughing. The self-proposed Anderson fan sitting behind me was forcing unenthusiastic chuckles, yet it read through off-vibrations: She didn't know why she was pushing the laugh. Sold as a screwball comedy with shades of dark humor, it's not. Anderson's footing rest underneath the improbable aspects of a family drama. The Royal Tenenbaums arrives as an offshoot companion to this year's earlier workhorse: Life as a House. Both stories are built out of a father's wish to rebuild his dilapidated family. Kevin Kline's character was dying from cancer; Gene Hackman is faking it. The long haul is heavy-handed and almost as teary-eyed, though in a different respect. Sure, Hackman may live, but he has three grown children, an estranged wife, his wife's suitor, his grandchildren, a dog, a family friend, and an old acquaintance to win over after years of neglect and mental abuse. Kline only had his impressionable teenage son, and an ex-wife who never stopped loving him. The fight's a little uneven.
Tenenbaums' language is smart and studious. Those two words equal unappealing prospects in viewing pleasure. Yet, its unflinchingly off-natured perusal grew on me. It's not often a film will win me over in its final act. I guess it's fitting to Royal Tenenbaum's plight as a human being: Like his film, the man also comes in at the last leg of his life to save a once-crumbling empire.
Wes Anderson has eloquently achieved his goal in thematic reasoning. Parts of Royal feel as dead as its proposed pages, sitting alone on a shelf. I can literally feel that dirty, thin plastic wrapped around its hardcover exterior. The process is bound in a heavy excess of detailed pages, read under a table in the library on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Paper cuts interrupt this daylong endeavor at revolving intervals. With its intricate characterization applied to each individual personality, the piece has captured the true essence of an old, long forgotten novel. Anderson based the material on biographies found in New Yorker magazine. Single frames flap along the side of the projector, a roll of backlogged microfiche that extols the length of a lifetime. It's as if Wes took unobtainable file folders and flung them in a straight, editable line.
The prologue, which sets up the film, holds more laughable moments then the rest of the work as a whole. Here, we see how the young Tenenbaums all achieved greatness at an early age. Due to their father's negligence, they soon faltered in heartbreak. Margot, the adopted sibling and a recognized playwright at age nine, runs away from home to marry into a reggae band. Business tycoon and Dalmatian mouse breeder Chas has a nervous breakdown after his wife dies in a plane crash, and favorite son Richie takes leave on an ocean liner to sooth the pain of his failed tennis career. "One recent winter" as the press notes like to point out, the family reunites in the very house that destroyed it. From here on out, Anderson and Owen Wilson's obscure jokes can't shake the gray cloud of depression that has filled Tenenbaums' black sky.
There are plenty of smile-inducing moments, spread thick with absurdity. Each drop is a finely tuned example of life gone wrong, but nothing earth-shatteringly hilarious ever presents itself. It's basically honor student kids kicking off jokes at the achiever's table; even if you "get" their ambiguous jabs (or pretend to), they're still not amusing in a ha-ha sense. Royal's time-out spent with his grandchildren, Ari and Uzi, almost achieves grandeur, but the pull of a deeper, psychological meaning behind these actions keep them from being much fun. Their music-fused montage is poignant more than anything else. It's extracted human nature rings true in histrionic beats.
Ben Stiller, as Chas, Uzi and Ari's father, appears in his first straight dramatic role since Your Friends and Neighbors. He's able to tone down the "Angry" persona he's played in laps, already having shared it with such projects as an episode of Friends and Mystery Men. This red-faced, over-the-top ass-showing has been simmered down into the realistic portrayal of a man dealing with great loss. Unshadowed by his contemporaries, his is one of the standout performances in an all-star cast. We've already dealt with Stiller's obnoxious attempts at achieving the laugh. It's nice to see him cognizant of his surroundings. Stiller uses great restraint in dealing with outraged emotions. He ditches his some-what cocky barometer, sliding in communication with the other actors. He finds the right, almost subtle, note and plays it to key. He's careful to watch his interactions closely, pitching them at a tone difference equal to the sum of its parts. He's not merely jumping on the back of a mailbox, letting his jaw widen in intense yells of hate: He's acting; nice and very rare, indeed.
The most touching of any initialized key plot point is the relationship between Owen Wilson's Richie and his adopted sister Margot, played in streaks of black mascara by Gwyneth Paltrow. On the surface and in the eyes of those moral majority line-leaders, their shared passion is buried deep underneath the word "WRONG." They are in love with each other, and aware of each other's growing affections towards one another. They are unable to act on this passion because of the stipulations involved. The least threatening aspect of their attraction is the fact that they are siblings. Their pairing seems overtly natural in the world Royal has created for itself, though they're almost too blind to see it.
Considering this imbroglio, it churns forth as the most interesting love-relationship committed to film in many a year. Portrayed by both actors with the emotional range of a thespian suffering from multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia, Paltrow and Wilson sell the notion home with one of the most touching scenes I've ever seen take place in a tent. The two kiss; madly, then soft, tasting each other for the first time. A moment passes. In a quiet, dignified passing that's sure to wring your eyes like a tight, wet rag, Paltrow leaves her inhibited soul mate with, "I guess we'll have to live secretly loving each other." A crack fractures the heart in unreachable places; these aren't pages you'd find in your typical Martin Lawrence time travel comedy. No.
Classic works of literature are usually paced at turtle-speed. The Royal Tenenbaums is no exception. Cranking in close to Paltrow's own updated remake of Great Expectations, this film fits nicely between the works of Charles Dickens and JD Salinger. One bothersome aspect is the chapter passages presented at each break in scheme. If you read the words underneath the revelations, near the bottom of the screen, you'll see they pulled the sentences directly from the working script. Why not create novelized fiction rather than regurgitate action description from the screenplay? Yeah, okay, most people aren't even going to bother to read them, so why make the point? Because I did read them, and it bothered me. A little authenticity was lost in structure, as far as I'm concerned. (I'm such an asshole. You're right, who cares? I guess leaving the pages in a scripted language reflects the inherent symbolism that movies are the epic novels of our time.)
Bill Murray is so understated; you might miss what's going on with his character. I never did fully understand his relationship with Dudley, a young patient of that's consistently in the background for no other reason than to add a touch of weirdness to the proceedings. Even weirder is watching Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson jump from the hyper reality of Behind Enemy Lines into this off-look at family life just within two weeks of each other. It sure would make for an odd double feature.
Like it or hate it, you can't deny the film's unique way of presenting itself. It may take multiple viewings before it hits, just like any really good song . I must admit, it touched me in a special way while beating up my best friend. Someday, I'll have my revenge. For now, I'll constantly consider different aspects of it while sitting on the toilet.
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