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The Royal Tenenbaums
The Royal Tenenbaums
Directed by	Wes Anderson
Produced by	Wes Anderson Barry Mendel Scott Rudin
Written by	Wes Anderson Owen Wilson
Starring	Gene Hackman Anjelica Huston Gwyneth Paltrow Ben Stiller Luke Wilson Owen Wilson Danny Glover Bill Murray
Music by	Mark Mothersbaugh
Cinematography	Robert Yeoman
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	December 4, 2001 December 28, 2001 March 14, 2002 March 15, 2002 May 7, 2002
Running time	109 min
Language	English
Budget	$28,000,000 (estimated)
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IMDb profile

The Royal Tenenbaums is the 2001 comedy 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. A rather off-beat, ironic, absurdist sense of humor pervades the entire film. As with all of director Wes Anderson's work, the tone of the film is one of hilarious tragedy and revels in the small joys of conversation and camaraderie.

The film features a large number of successful actors in its cast, including 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, Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum and Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair. Alec Baldwin narrates.

Gene Hackman won a Golden Globe for his performance and the screenplay by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award.

[edit] Plot

The movie begins at the point where Royal Tenenbaum is explaining to his three children Chas, Margot, and Richie that he and his wife, Etheline will soon separate. The scene then evolves into a short explanation of each of the Tenenbaum's lives. Each begins success at a very young age. Chas is a math and business genius that creates a business in his teens selling specially mutated "dalmatian" mice to dealers in Little Tokyo. He also has money stolen from his personal safety deposit box by Royal. Margot is given money for one of her plays that she wrote at a very young age. She invites Royal to a birthday party where one of her plays will be shown. Royal is unnecessarily critical of her play. Richie is a tennis prodigy, but is not artfully or mathematically talented. He expresses his love for his adopted sister, Margot, through many paintings and also camps out at the public archives sharing a sleeping bag with her. Royal takes him on regular outings to dogfights, which neither of the other children are invited to. Eli Cash is the Tenenbaum's neighbor, and he makes himself one of Richie's best friends. Richie also has a pet hawk named Mordechai, which takes flight at the end of this montage, leading into the latter part of the movie.

The movie then skips ahead 22 years. Royal is kicked out of the hotel he had been living in for the past 22 years. All three of the Tenenbaum children are in a post-success slump. Richie is traveling all over the planet in a boat following a breakdown at a tennis match, presumably hiding from the world. He writes a letter to Eli saying that he loves Margot. Chas has become extremely overprotective of his two children, Ari and Uzi, following his wife's tragic death in a plane crash. Margot is married to a neurologist named Raleigh Sinclair, but soaks in a bathtub 6 hours a day. She hides her smoking habit, along with most of her past from her husband. Raleigh performs tests on Dudley Heinsbergen, researching a strange disorder he calls Heinsbergen syndrome. It involves elements of "Amnesia, Dyslexia, Color Blindness, and an extremely acute sense of hearing." The movie then cuts to Etheline's situation. Her accountant, Henry Sherman, proposes to her.

Being kicked out onto the street, broke, homeless, and given the news that his wife is falling in love with her accountant, Royal explains to his wife Etheline, that he has stomach cancer. Etheline calls each of the Tenenbaums and they make arrangements to meet. It is the first time they have been together in 22 years. As soon as they meet, Royal discovers that things are very wrong in each of his children's lives. Chas has harbored hate against him for shooting him in the hand with a BB gun as a child (among other reasons). To Chas's dismay, Royal moves into the old house and sets up a large amount of medical equipment in Richie's room. Royal discovers that Chas is ridiculously overprotective of his children. He then decides to "breed a little recklessness" into Ari and Uzi. He takes them to a pool, horse riding, go karts around town, robbing a convenience store, throwing water balloons at cars and riding on the back of a garbage truck. When he gets back, Chas takes him into a closet and starts yelling at him for putting his kids in harms way. When Royal shouts out, "I think your having a nervous breakdown!" Chas steps out of the closet to avoid breaking his chain of denial.

Margot, on the other hand, has problems of her own. Eli tells her that Richie loves her. Later, Raleigh comes to check things out with her. Royal observes the two, and discovers that she has been cheating on him with Eli. Raleigh has his suspicions, too. He talks to Richie (who also loves her) about it, and (although it is not shown in the movie) they hire a private eye to spy on her. This forms a sort of "love quadrilateral." On the other hand, Royal starts to try to win back Etheline. Henry observes Royal eating a cheeseburger and decides to tell Etheline that he thinks that he may not have cancer. She doesn't care. Royal, starts using a variety of racial slurs to try to piss off Henry. At one point, he calls him "Coltrane," and they start a fight over it. The fight is broken up by Etheline. Henry then confronts Royal's partner in crime, Pagoda, and asks him how much Royal is paying him. Henry also discovers that his cancer medication are just Tic Tacs in medical bottles.

Henry picks an opportune moment, and tells the whole family that he knows that Royal can't have stomach cancer. He explains that it's extremely painful, and you can't eat "three cheesburgers a day and fries if you have it." He also says that his past wife had died from it, so he would know what it looks like. Having been discovered, Royal and Pagoda leave. Before he goes, Royal says that the past six days had been the best days of his life. Now even more broke then before, he and Pagoda get jobs as elevator attendants.

Richie and Raleigh then get the private eye report back. The following scene shows Margot starting smoking, escaping from school, having a lesbian affair, getting married to a Jamaican recording artist for 9 days, having one night stand affairs with various men, including Eli Cash. Upon hearing the report, Raleigh says "So, she smokes." The news has a much more profound effect on Richie. He goes into the bathroom, shaves off his beard and most of his hair, calmly announces that he will kill himself and then slits his wrists, causing massive blood loss. Dudley finds him in a pool of his own blood, and Raleigh rushes him to the hospital. Soon after as the Tenenbaums sit in the waiting room, a visibly sad Raleigh acknowledges Margot's extramarital affairs in front of her and the family before leaving. Soon after, Richie escapes the hospital and meets with Margot. They tell each other of their secret love.

Not long before, Royal and Etheline had signed the divorce papers making Etheline single. Henry and Etheline then plan a marriage. Before the marriage, Eli, painted like an African priest, drives his car into the side of the building. Royal saves the boys, Ari and Uzi, from being run over, but their dog isn't so fortunate. Eli flies out of the car, through a window. Then Chas chases him through the building, breaking Father Peterson's ankle. When Chas catches up to Eli, he wrestles with him, and damages Richie's eye as he tries to pull him off of Eli. Chas throws Eli over a fence and turns around to realize that he's the only one chasing Eli. He then climbs over the fence and lays down next to Eli. During the aftermath, Chas recognizes that Royal saved his children from death, mending their friendship. Royal then buys a dog from the firefighters that are at the scene for Ari and Uzi.

48 hours later, Etheline and Henry are married in a Judge's Chamber. Margot releases a new play based on her family, that gets fair attendance and mixed reviews with a snickering Royal among the audience, who is aware of the semi-autobiographical elements. Raleigh publishes a book on Dudley's condition entitled "Dudley's World." Eli checks himself into rehab somewhere in North Dakota. Richie starts a junior tennis program. Royal has a heart attack at the age of 68. Chas is the only witness to his death, with the father and son having re-established their familial bond. The funeral is small, but Royal's headstone reads "Died Tragically Rescuing his Family From the Wreckage of a Destroyed Sinking Battleship." The movie closes with most of the characters walking away from the funeral.

[edit] Origins

The siblings of the Tenenbaum family are all highly intelligent and disillusioned, struggling with their own identities. They 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.

[edit] Characters

• Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) - A shamelessly selfish lawyer (briefly imprisoned) and a failure as a father. Intentionally, he shot his son Chas with a BB gun during a game, and consistently and irrelevantly feels he must point out that Margot is his "adopted daughter." He often took only Richie to dog fights while excluding Chas and Margot.
• Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) - A noted archeologist, and the mother of the Tenenbaum children, who "makes their education her top priority" and helps them climb to fame. Later on, Ethel finds love in Henry Sherman, her accountant, the complete opposite of her estranged husband Royal.
• Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) - A genius in international finance, Chas sued his father twice and had him disbarred because of the bonds his father stole from his safety deposit box when he was fourteen. His wife, Rachel Evans Tenenbaum, died in a plane crash and he has since become obsessed with the safety of his sons, Ari and Uzi. They have a dog named Buckley.
• Margot Helen Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) - A playwrighting prodigy, Margot once ran away from home for two weeks and came back with half of one of her fingers missing. In the film, spent much of her time moping in her bathtub, watching television. She smokes, unbeknownst to anyone else in her family as she is infamously secretive. She is also adopted, as Royal is quick to point out.
• Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) - A tennis prodigy, Richie is secretly in love with his adopted sister, Margot. While successful in his tennis career, Richie has a nervous breakdown on court in front of thousands of fans and loses his desire to play tennis soon after. At the beginning of the film, he has been living on an ocean liner for several months. He drinks Bloody Marys with pepper throughout the movie.
• Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) - A "friend of the family" since the Tenenbaum children were very young, considered Richie's best friend, Eli has a burning desire to "be a Tenenbaum." He gained success as an author of Western novels; his latest work presupposes the outcome if Custer didn't die at Little Bighorn. Cash is attracted to Margot Tenenbaum and has a drug problem. Wes Anderson has stated that Eli Cash actually is based on two authors; Cormac McCarthy and Jay McInerney.
• Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) - Ethel Tenenbaum's accountant and romantic interest. He calls out Royal on the fact that he is faking his case of stomach cancer. He knows this because his wife died from stomach cancer, and that Royal doesn't show any of the symptoms that she showed.
• Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) - Husband of Margot Tenenbaum and a famed (and strange) neurologist in his own right. Anderson has mentioned that St. Clair was based on Oliver Sacks. He is constantly accompanied by his adolescent test subject Dudley Heinsbergen.
• Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) - Friend and servant to the Tenenbaum Family. He also acts as an informant working for Royal to update him on his family. They met after Pagoda, an assassin in Calcutta, stabbed Royal; he earned his trust however when he then carried him on his back to the hospital.

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: The Royal Tenenbaums (soundtrack)

The soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums contains a style typical of other Wes Anderson films. Mark Mothersbaugh, a member of Devo, composed the score for the soundtrack as well as for many of Anderson's other films. The film also features many rock songs from the 1960s-'80s.

There have been two soundtrack album releases for The Royal Tenenbaums. The first, in 2001, was well-received by most critics, though some songs were omitted; notably, Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", Van Morrison's "Everyone", John Lennon's "Look At Me", The Mutato Muzika Orchestra's version of The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and two Rolling Stones tracks.

In 2002, the soundtrack was re-released with four songs not found on the 2001 release, but the two songs found in the film by The Rolling Stones ("She Smiled Sweetly", "Ruby Tuesday") were still not on the soundtrack. This is because while The Rolling Stones allow their music to be used in film, they do not allow their material to appear on any soundtracks. The soundtrack was also still missing the Van Morrison track, which served as the closing credits song in the film.

[edit] Trivia

• Some members of the Tenenbaum family are actually modeled after members of Cinematographer Robert Yeoman's brother-in-law Walter Karnas' family. Certain small points of family members were exaggerated to make the character its own. The part of Royal Tenenbaum was written for Gene Hackman, but written after Walter Karnas himself. The same goes for the three Tenenbaum children, partially written after three of the Karnas children.
• Etheline Tenenbaum, played by Anjelica Huston, was modeled after Wes Anderson's own mother. Anderson's mother similarly adopted archeology after divorcing her husband. The glasses Etheline wears are actually Mrs. Anderson's. At one point during filming, Anjelica Huston asked Wes Anderson if she was, in fact, supposed to be playing his mother.
• Two of the film's characters are thought to be modeled after popular culture icon Nico. The blonde hair and dark mascara of Nico is reflected in the styling of Margot Tenenbaum; additionally, Chas's son Ari shares a name with Nico's son with Alain Delon.
• Along with collaborator Owen Wilson, Anderson had Gene Hackman in mind for Royal Tenenbaum but the actor was reluctant to take the part. Hackman said that he prefers to disappear into a role, instead of having a role fitted for him to play.
• The name Buckley for the dog came from singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley. He's a beagle, which is a tribute to Snoopy from Peanuts.
• The narration and the way the film follows each family member is similar to Fox's canceled acclaimed television sitcom Arrested Development. Jason Bateman, one of the show's stars, described the show as "The Royal Tenenbaums shot like COPS". Arrested Development's creator and head writer Mitchell Hurwitz said that when he saw The Royal Tenenbaums he already had the idea for AD in mind and thought "Well, I guess I won't be doing that" but subsequently changed his mind.
• For several locations, Anderson used run-down neighborhoods in upper Manhattan. All the exterior shots--and most of the interior ones--of the Tenenbaum house are of a residential building at the corner of 144th Street and Convent Avenue, just north of City College. The cemetery scenes were filmed at Trinity Cemetery between 153rd and 155th Streets, near Riverside Drive.
• The actual name for the movie was inspired in part, by longtime friend of Wes Anderson, Brian Tenenbaum who has appeared in several of Anderson's movies in bit parts. In the Royal Tenenbaums he is one of the paramedics seen at the end of the film.
• The paintings in Eli Cash's apartment are "Bad Route" and "Attack" by Miguel Calderón. They were actually from photographs taken by Calderón and reproduced in oil by a portrait artist.
• In one scene, Etheline Tenenbaum urges her daughter Margot Tenenbaum to get out of the bathroom. A similar scene takes up a large part of J.D. Salinger's book Franny and Zooey, when Bessie Glass spends quite a bit of time bothering her son Zooey Glass.
• Every time Eli Cash makes a drug deal, The Clash is playing.
• Henry Sherman is the name of Wes Anderson's former landlord. When the character of Henry Sherman is introduced in the film, he is standing in front of an apartment with a sign that says "H. Sherman - Landlord".
• During the suicide scene, "Needle In The Hay" plays, a song by Elliott Smith. Smith himself may have committed suicide in 2003 by stabbing himself twice in the chest, though the actual cause of death remains unknown.
• Margot Tenenbaum's fur coat is by Italian furrier, Fendi.
• The characters of Uzi and Ari are re-introduced in the band Jimmy Eat World's video for the 2004 single "Pain".
• In 2007, a Canadian band called The Sweet Homewreckers released a music video inspired by the visual aesthetic of The Royal Tenenbaums.[1]
• The Font used throughout the film is Futura and in particular Futura Bold[2]. Anderson used it widely in Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and in the title of The Life Aquatic....

[edit] Taglines

Family Isn't A Word... It's A Sentence.

You Are Invited To A Remarkable Family Gathering.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Royal Tenenbaums

• The Royal Tenenbaums at the Internet Movie Database
• The Royal Tenenbaums at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Royal Tenenbaums at Box Office Mojo
• "Bird's Eye View" of the Royal Tenenbaums home
• The Criterion Collection DVD
• Criterion Collection essay by Kent Jones
• FilmForce profile including stills and video clips
• Music video by The Sweet Homewreckers that was inspired by the film.