The Royal Tenenbaums

4.06
    The Royal Tenenbaums
    2001

    Synopsis

    Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary --- all geniuses. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father's fault. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is the story of the family's sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.

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    Cast

    • Gene HackmanRoyal Tenenbaum
    • Anjelica HustonEtheline Tenenbaum
    • Ben StillerChas Tenenbaum
    • Gwyneth PaltrowMargot Tenenbaum
    • Luke WilsonRichie Tenenbaum
    • Owen WilsonEli Cash
    • Bill MurrayRaleigh St. Clair
    • Danny GloverHenry Sherman
    • Seymour CasselDusty
    • Kumar PallanaPagoda

    Recommendations

    • 90

      Rolling Stone

      Anderson offers no phony uplift for the Tenenbaums or for audiences. But he does know how to take a sad song and make it better. In these troubled times, that's a gift.
    • 88

      New York Daily News

      The performances are all terrific, but Gene Hackman is close to a career best as the family patriarch Royal, the most useless man you can't help loving.
    • 80

      Washington Post

      It's a B+, not an A. This would be enough for most filmmakers. But Anderson must contend with a higher standard. It's his fault for being original.
    • 80

      Chicago Reader

      Far and away the funniest comedy in town.
    • 80

      Variety

      Underachieves in its own way by trapping an expansive, probing story in a brittle, highly artificial style that constricts character and emotional development.
    • 75

      Seattle Post-Intelligencer

      It makes for chuckling entertainment and it's fun to watch as it's happening. But its New York characters are not a bit believable, there's no real bite to the humor, and the film never adds up to be more than the sum of its parts.
    • 63

      Charlotte Observer

      Over the course of 108 minutes, The Royal Tenenbaums drops downward on the humor scale from hilarious to funny to quirky to pretentiously bizarre to chaotic.
    • 63

      Boston Globe

      There are laughs in it. But mostly you sit around waiting for it to be funnier, or at least funny more often. The problem is that it hasn't figured out a way to be funny while satisfyingly accommodating the pain in these characters.

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