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The Royal Tenenbaums

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The Royal Tenenbaums

Name: The Royal Tenenbaums
Director: Wes Anderson
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2001
Duration: 1 h 45 min
Cast: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Owen Wilson

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Comedy
Drama

2001
Wes Anderson
105 mins
15

Summary

Comedy drama starring Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow. Royal Tenenbaum is the estranged father of three gifted children whose promise foundered when he and his wife Etheline split up. A once successful lawyer, Royal is now broke and homeless. Feigning terminal illness, he is taken in by the soon-to-be-remarried Etheline, but his presence awakens long-dormant family demons.

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Review

A star rating of 5 out of 5.

Andrew Collins

Produced and directed by the hugely talented Wes Anderson and co-written with actor and regular collaborator Owen Wilson, this is the much anticipated follow-up to Rushmore, one of the quirkier American films of the late 1990s. The Royal Tenenbaums is no less quirky. It's a story about a gifted but dysfunctional New York family that is reunited when estranged patriarch Gene Hackman feigns terminal illness. An ambitiously original ensemble comedy, it is related in an episodic, storybook format with off-screen narration from Alec Baldwin. This stylised presentation suggests that the interlocking subplots involving the various Tenenbaums - Gwyneth Paltrow's foundering marriage to Bill Murray; Ben Stiller's paranoia; Luke Wilson's deepening depression - will be resolved in a detached fashion, without warmth or the audience's empathy. That is not so. As the narrative builds, the atmosphere thaws and something like poetry unfolds. Immaculately written and brilliantly performed (with Hackman, especially, on magnificent form), this extraordinary fable restores one's faith in American cinema.

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7.6/10

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Cast

rolenameRoyal TenenbaumGene HackmanEtheline TenenbaumAnjelica HustonChas TenenbaumBen StillerMargot TenenbaumGwyneth PaltrowEli CashOwen WilsonRaleigh St ClairBill MurrayHenry ShermanDanny GloverRichie TenenbaumLuke WilsonPagodaKumar PallanaDustySeymour CasselNarratorAlec BaldwinAri TenenbaumGrant Rosenmeyer