Family isn't a word, it's a sentence.
Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etherline (Anjelica Huston) had three children - Chas (Ben Stiller), Richie (Luke Wilson) and Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) - they were a family of geniuses, and then they separated. Years later, feigning terminal illness, the reprehensible Royal Tenenbaum returns to his wife's house where the Tenenbaum kids, are also back under the same roof.
Special Agent Matti
The film I saw was not what was on the trailer, which makes The Royal Tenenbaums out to be a laugh a minute round of snappy one-liners. That does not describe The Royal Tenenbaums by any means.
This film is a drama about the unsuitability of some people to (a) marry and (b) raise children. (I could insert an in parenthesis comment about heterosexual couples having children at random but homosexual couples being forbidden to adopt children no matter how suitable they are as parents, but I won't.) As with any drama that is true to life, there is a certain amount of happiness, a certain amount of unhappiness and a certain amount of humour. Most humour in life is black - that's life - and the humour of The Royal Tenenbaums is as dark as a black cat at midnight at the bottom of a well wearing dark sunglasses. That's why the trailer is misleading: it features the brighter, television kind of humour that sustains the multitude of sit-coms screening these days. False advertising. Call in the Department of Fair Trading.
Meanwhile, feel free to see The Royal Tenenbaums, it's witty, it's dark and it's painful. Squirming can be a good thing.
MA 15+ (Adult themes)
105 minutes (1:45 hours)
Film: 28 March 2002
DVD rental: 23 October 2002
VHS rental: 23 October 2002
DVD retail: 30 April 2003
VHS retail: 30 April 2003
DVD retail: 2 August 2006
