Review: The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

The films of Wes Anderson often center around family life and how difficult inter-family relationships can be. Perhaps no Anderson film focuses on this more than The Royal Tenenbaums.

The Tenenbaums children, sons Chas and Richie and adopted daughter Margot all start off in life like houses a-fire. Too bad each and every fire burns right out and all three end up experiencing what might be termed “second-act problems”.

Maybe it had something to do with dad Royal skipping out on mom Etheline at about the point that they might have used some guidance concerning adult life. Well, after several years adrift rascally Royal is down to dust and hears that Etheline is about to marry someone worthy of her, Henry.

Though not exactly repentant, Royal devises a pretty underhanded scheme to try and get back in everyone’s good graces before he’s replaced entirely. He gets much more than he bargained for with his now truly messed up brood with their myriad of problems.

Here is another story about an errant and largely absent father and what place he may or may not deserve in his family’s life. Yes, Royal is flawed (to say the least) but his family isn’t easy to embrace either. In the end, he and they must all learn to accept and tolerate one another.

It’s pretty clear that if Royal could do it all over again…well, he’d probably do pretty much the same things all over again. However, he’s not a terrible person and he does seem to have some love for his family (his grandsons Ari and Uzi, however, seem to be able to see that a bit more clearly than the others). Hey, what real life family doesn’t have a problematic dad (and/or mom)?

-written by Adit (kru’20)-