The Royal Tennebaums

[Gold Trumpet]

A while ago, I promised in a nameless thread I was going to bash this movie coming up. Well, for the most part, I will. I saw the movie when it first came out on video and not again til recently. I liked it on first viewing, but felt the movie took too many easy way outs in its ending and how far it wanted to push the material. Now, the movie seems like an exercise in obcession with useless things and a typical story only behind it all, resulting in cute fluff.
I've heard it said that the movie plays out like a comic book, but the thing is, comics book are not really the most satisfying thing in showing a subject. They skirt the stories on its outside objectification and run on the motors of style more than anything. This is not to say RT is doomed from the beginning in using this style, because it is not. RT just doesn't tell a story that excels in this format at all. It's a typical story all the way. The comic book aspect in no way speaks for a truth to this movie that no other way of filmmaking can, it just only glosses the outside details and hardly touches the characters. The characters are defined not by who they are, but what they are wearing. They stand around, look without expression and let their looks say all they have to really say. Even more amazing, this film is jammed with known names in its cast, but it has attention to maybe carry two of them at most. Danny Glover, as good as can be, is in a role that results in the doing of nothing but showing up. Normally, an unkown actor would have been given a role of no importance. There is actually a lot of wasted talent here, all being jammed into a story because Anderson wants to decorate this world as much as he can with hood ornaments (characters). By the end, the movie tries to pay off where a deeper inspection of characters would have been fitting and the final scenes would have been more rewarding. This movie is way too cute and Anderson trying to stylize beyond any good measure that leads more to a coloring effect than anything purposeful for the story.

I liked the movie a lot when I first saw it, but the second viewing was way too much to handle because the pleasure was only that first viewing pleasure. Too much cuteness and too much Anderson that is being run with a story and purpose that excels at nothing. The result is execution that is cute but nothing else.

~rougerum

[Pwaybloe]

Shoo... Wow... Thanks... That's just what this place needed.

'Scuse me while I throw myself in front of a lawnmower.

[Keener]

One of my favorites.

[Redlum]

I think 'comic book' is wrong, and 'fairy tale' is correct. And I think that would explain many of your criticisms towards over-stylization.

I think we all know that to do justice to 8+ characters requires 3 hours and 15 minutes. I also think that you could still be enjoying this movie like you did the first time if you didnt apply such a critical mind set to it. Thats mainly what I think.

One of my favourites too. Its a joy to watch.

[Gold Trumpet]

On first suggestion, fairy tale doesn't seem right. It really does feel more like a comic book, especially with how it is filmed. Straight shots of the character looking back, with a colorful background to suggest their own personality. That's how they are introduced. But much of the movie seems made on that picture to picture kind of filmmaking, more like a comic book where you get images that seem to correlate together as an edit is made to show a different angle, but the main point is that it feels connecting like a comic book would in keeping with one situation, but having the characters keep in poses to suggest that things are moving forward them, but you also know where it is coming from. Also, the dialogue is very bitey and sharp, as in a comic book. It's all very packaged and quotable. Fairy tales seem to go out of reality and into its own world of imagination, while comic books seem at both times to be unrealistic in story but grounded in realism to where it can't go off in mythical odysseys to other worlds.

Also, I don't purposely put a critical mind to these movies, its just how I am in viewing them. Sometimes a movie can be so much fun and entertaining I will completely forget to analyze on any level, like The Mummy or some other good action film.

~rougerum

[Sleuth]

GT, I would just like to say that I respect you for keeping your own opinion amidst a lot of negative feedback (not in this thread).  I don't agree with you much, but you are neat

[ShanghaiOrange]

Those sure are a lot of words.

I love the Royal Tenenbaums.

[chainsmoking insomniac]

I thought the style was one of the movie's biggest charms.  And even if the movie had a comic book 'feel', it was still very entertaining to watch.  And in response to your Danny Glover crack, a no name playing that part would have been dissappointing.  Glover was perfect for that role, and no one else could have played it better.  And as posted earlier, the amount of characters Wes wrote into the story would have taken the movie to Magnolia length, and would not have been nearly as interesting as in its present form.
In conclusion, Royal Tennenbaums kicks some fucking ass.

[Gold Trumpet]

Punchdrunk,
I agree it is entertaining to watch through how it executes its style, but that isn't the best of things to really have. The second time I watched it, the fluff of that entertainment quality began to lose appeal and I went looking for more and really didn't find it. It's entertainment value on first viewing seems to be the only thing really with the film.

How would it have been dissapointing in a no name was playing Glover's role? Sure, with already seen a known name playing it, it may be, but what importance did his character really hold in structure to the movie? His character was the man Anjelica Huston fell in love, but in the minimal time he got on screen, Glover stood around and talked. Glover's role was so small, and actually, it was a tool role, a role basically of the importance to drive Hackman's character into jealousy and wanting to gain back his family. That's it. You didn't reason out why said he was perfect so your disagreement was hard me to defend in the first place. I don't mind disagreement, but give me a fair shot.

Actually, the problem with so many characters didn't need to extend to Magnolia length or stay at its present form and give less time to each character, but really just needed some characters taken out completely. And even though a gasp may come from some fans of Anderson, don't worry. This has been done before. Olivier took out some characters when he filmed Hamlet not to just do so, but so he could have a sharper focus on Hamlet in order to deepen the power of his struggle. This movie has too many loose ends in its story and focus but refuses to get rid of it for fear it will lose its charm of cuteness when actually it has so much more to gain by doing so.

~rougerum

[dufresne]

what did you think of Rushmore?

[Redlum]

Come on, its a fairy tale, I think I even recollect Wes Anderson saying so himself. Starting with the flagged tower at the very beginning of the Hey Jude montage. He tried to give the film a feel, that wasnt quite recognisable, but seemed like it could be a distant memory. The Taxi Cabs for example werent the traditional bright yellow, despite being in New York. I think its a hard thing to take anything out of beyond entertainment though, because the characters are hard to relate to. Not because they are badly developed though, but for the plain fact that they're ex-geniuses, whose father only wants them for their money, a scenario we dont come across that often. Agreed, perhaps this would not be the case if more time was available to devote to a character, but then it wouldn't be the movie it is. I think Stillers character carried the thread of the most value, because he had experienced and was still experiencing a loss that happens to a lot of people.

This movie has too many loose ends in its story and focus but refuses to get rid of it for fear it will lose its charm of cuteness when actually it has so much more to gain by doing so.

Its a movie about family, how can you not have it about all the characters? I see it so that the father, the mother, and the three children all have prominance in the film. The only people you can take away the limelight from are Eli, and Danny Glovers character. They're both brilliant parts of the story, and serve some of the main-five characters so well.

Dont you think 'cuteness' is a very harsh criticism, in light of the efforts went to, to create the Tenenbaum world. I know you think that too much emphasis was put on it in the film but very rarely do people go to these lengths. The result of these efforts is that we've (well I've) never seen anything like the Tenenbaums before. Whats wrong with enjoying that? Its 'light-hearted' - maybe its a new form of the 'feel-good' movie.

Out of interest how do you rank Wes Anderson's film, personally, I would say RTs is my least favourite. 1)Bottle Rocket  2)Rushmore  3)Royal Tenenbaums.

You know I have great respect for your knowledge and love of film.

Also, you dont analyse The Mummy and the like because there's no reason to, they are purely entertaiment movies, not grounded in reality at all.

[Gold Trumpet]

redlum,
Well, if you say Anderson described it as a fairy tale, then fine, but when I put this film down, people slammed me by saying it was like a comic book and that Anderson said it himself. For this, I'm not sure who to believe so I won't say anything further. But there is a dreamlike quality that the film never really seems to go for, because the film is so much about cutting between images and very rarely lets the camera move around for much periods of time. I'm arguing that all the contexts out of reality the movie takes itself out can be completely attributed to what a comic book does and the framing through out much of the movie is near identical to a feel of comic book. Even more so how each character is identified through a specific clothing, which is common place in comics so the reader can always distinguish and identify characters for a certain look and behavior that seems to come out of what they wear. Fairy tales really seem to speak more on the dream like senses, where the camera can roam around and get a feel for the world that way.

But if they are hard to relate to, then wouldn't the film try to investigate each of them more to make them more sympathetic to us? I'm not buying that the movie acts the way it does for the uniqueness of the story and the characters it is showing. The movie really is a typical story about a family, its just the ex genuises thing is the coloring for this family. I can understand it is doing for the portrait of the entire family, but I'm not sure if the film really believes it is doing it for that at all. The great reliance upon the world it has created and bringing up main characters like Glovers characters, Owen Wilson's, and Bill Muarry's. The film seems to be investigating them mainly at some standstill, so the world behind it and their whole look can get noticed. But instead of this world just being a minor character on first viewing and getting more interesting with each viewing as the viewer looks farther to the edges of the frame, it announces itself as the most interesting thing while the characters operate within that system.

I didn't like Rushmore, not for the same reasons as on RT, but mainly because the film ended on romantic idealizations even when the film was pure black humor for the rest of the film. The ending just seemed to be a take away from the promise of what could happen because of the rest of the film. I wish that film would have gotten some more balls.

~rougerum

[Redlum]

Ok GT. I know what you're saying, maybe I have lower expectations than you. Having said that, I quite often find myself wishing a movie would have had more balls at the end. Signs being one of these (the fact that he became a priest again really annoyed me, surely the existence of ET's would have thrown his faith into further dismay).

As I said, I think Anderson is almost making a new type of 'feel good' movie, and I like that style.

[budgie]

the dialogue is very bitey

I'm going to steal that.

GT, will you make you next analysis a spoken one so I can get your rhythm? I want to hear you deliver real bad.

[RegularKarate]

I'd enjoy hearing that myself.  I once tried to read one of these out loud and I found that there was no possible way to not make it sound like a broken robot (no GT, I'm not calling you a broken robot, you just post funky).