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The Royal Tenenbaums - Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Wes Anderson

Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

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.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film drama black comedy family relationships manipulate

Persons of interest

Gene Hackman .... Royal Tenenbaum
Anjelica Huston .... Etherline Tenenbaum
Ben Stiller .... Chas Tenenbaum
Luke Wilson .... Richie Tenenbaum
Gwyneth Paltrow .... Margot Tenenbaum
Owen Wilson .... Eli, Writer
Bill Murray .... Raleigh St Claire
Danny Glover .... Henry Sherman
Al Thompson .... Walter Sherman
Wes Anderson .... Screenwriter
Wes Anderson .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

The Royal Tenenbaums official movie sites
The Royal Tenenbaums QuickTime movie trailers
Awards and film festivals:

Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes) 2002: Best comedy/musical actor (Gene Hackman)

See also Running with scissors, Margot at the wedding
Studios and distributors:

Touchstone * Buena Vista International

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

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.

Media intelligence (DVD)

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Disc: Single side, single layer
Languages: English, French, Italian
Picture: Widescreen 1.33:1
Special features:

Deleted scenes
Featurette: With the filmmakers - A portrait by Albert Maysles, featuring Wes Anderson
Interviews: The Peter Bradley show
Scrapbook
Trailers

Subtitles: Closed captions, Danish, Dutch, English, English captions, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish

Security censorship classification

MA 15+ (Adult themes)

Surveillance time

105 minutes (1:45 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

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