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Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums is the 2001 half-comedy, half-drama about three genius siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure after their eccentric father leaves them in their adolescent years.

The father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), returns to his family more than a decade later, faking a case of stomach cancer, after he is evicted from his room at the Lindbergh Palace Hotel and disbarred from practicing law. The film is the story of how Royal comes back to his family to save them from the unexpected wreckage of their lives.

Also of note is that the siblings of the Tenenbaum family—all highly intelligent, disillusioned New Yorkers struggling with their own identities—are loosely based on a rabble of similarly disillusioned siblings from the later books of famed author J.D. Salinger. The Glass family, comprised of seven child-prodigy-turned-adult-misanthrope characters, is the central subject of three of Salinger's five published books, and form the basis for the quirky and unhappy Tenenbaum family, as director Wes Anderson revealed in an interview with Premiere magazine conducted in January 2001.

Perhaps the film's most endearing aspect, however, is its remarkable casting, which includes Anjelica Huston as Etheline Tenenbaum, Owen Wilson as Eli Cash, Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum, Ben Stiller as Chas Tenenbaum, Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum, Danny Glover as Henry Sherman and Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair. Gene Hackman won a Golden Globe for his performance and the screenplay by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award.

A rather off-beat, ironic sense of humour pervades the entire film, as with all of Anderson's work, manifest as a tone of hilarious tragedy and as pleasure taken in the small joys of conversation and comradery.

Other films by Anderson include Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998), which were co-written by Anderson and Owen Wilson, and more recently The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach. As with these other efforts, the music of The Royal Tenenbaums is partly composed and compiled by ex-Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh. The selections are very compelling, and make themselves an integral part of the film.