The Royal Tenenbaums 2001
This is a movie I didn’t see at the movies and then kept meaning to see on DVD, but never got around to. Netflix had recommended it as something I would like. In the end, I watched a censored version on Comedy Central. There are things I really liked, like the cast of very quirky characters played expertly by Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Gene Hackman. There is a very good story in here about Luke Wilson’s burned out former tennis prodigy and his relationship with his adopted sister, played by Paltrow. Maybe that should have been the whole movie. However instead it mostly centers around the deadbeat dad, played by Gene Hackman, who wants to get involved with his family again primarily so that he can manipulate them. He is a horrible, horrible person, but we’re supposed to like him anyway in the end. And I just didn’t. Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller play cartoonish characters that would have been better if they hadn’t been such exaggerations. So it’s kind of a mixed bag with some very good material and some material that needed some polish. It has that desperate feel of a first-time indie filmmaker trying to throw everything into the mix because he may never get another chance. Could have been better. B.