Royal Tennenbaum: Gene Hackman	Richie Tennenbaum: Luke Wilson
Etheline Tennenbaum: Angelica Houston	Eli Cash: Owen Wilson
Chas Tennenbaum: Ben Stiller	Henry Sherman: Danny Glover
Margot Helen Tennenbaum: Gwyneth Paltrow	Raleigh St. Clair: Bill Murray Director: Wes Anderson

30 Second Bottom Line: Royal Tennenbaum left his family when his three children, all geniuses, were still small. Thirty years later he moves back in with his estranged wife and grown children and tries to become the father and husband he never was.

Story Line: We first see Royal Tennenbaum (Gene Hackman) at the head of a long table in a formal dining room explaining to his three young kids that he's moving out of the house. "Are you getting divorced?" one asks. The kids are sad; dad seems guilty. When he leaves it seems he's gone for good and has little to do with this family.

The movie is structured along with a format of a book entitled "The Royal Tennebaums" with narration by Alec Baldwin, who tells us in a very matter of fact way about the extraordinary accomplishments of each Tennenbaum child. There is Chas (as a grown up played by Ben Stiller) who is a businessman genius. By the sixth grade he has discovered how to breed Dalmatian mice, which he sells for great profit in Little Tokyo. He mostly eats at his desk while drinking a cup of coffee to save time and has an uncanny knack for negotiating great real estate deals.

Margot (as a grown up played by Gwyneth Paltrow) is an extraordinary playwright who wins a $50,000 Braverman Grant in ninth grade. The Tennenbaums adopted her at the age of two (which her dad always mentions whenever introducing her).

Richie (Luke Wilson) is a Bjorn Borg -type, headband wearing, tennis player who is winning trophies by third grade. "He turned pro at seventeen and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row," according to our narrator.

During their formative years we see moments that Royal spends with each of them. He is shooting a BB gun at his son Chas (who is supposedly on Royal's "team"), who then sports a bullet embedded in his hand for the rest of his life. There is Royal dissing a performance of one of Margot's plays, staged when Margot is just eleven. After his harsh critique she simply walks away form him and wants nothing more from him. Richie seems to be Royal's favorite, and he gets to go on special outings with his father, betting on pit bull dogfights in the back alleys of New York.

In the meantime Etheline (Anjelica Houston), the mother of this exceptional brood, writes a book entitled "A Family of Geniuses." At best this family is quirky. Each person seems to inhabit their own world, and each seems unrelated and almost unaware of each other. A dramatic and funny example of this is when, at fourteen, Margot and Richie run away and for a winter live in the African Wing of the Public

Archives, sharing a sleeping bag under a research table. No one seems to look for them or even realize that they're gone. Again, according to our narrator, Margot disappears four years later and returns with part of a finger missing. No one asks questions, they simply cut a tip off her gloves and sew the top to accommodate the new, shortened form of her finger.

The other constant character in the Tennenbaum household is Eli (Owen Wilson). Eli lives in a small apartment across the street from the large Tennenbaum home. He wants to be a Tennenbaum, and is always in their home. Eli ends up being a famous writer.

The children ultimately have grown up and moved on. Margot is spending all her time in a tiny white tiled, grungy little bathroom, where she refuses to let her husband (Bill Murray) enter. Richie, who fell apart in the World Cup finals at age 27, has been sailing alone on a yacht around the world. Chas and his two sons live in a sterile mansion of a modern glass house. He is obsessed with a fear of fire breaking out and killing him and his kids-ever since his wife died in a plane crash a year earlier. He is constantly rousing them in the middle of the night for fire drills. Ultimately, he decides for safety sake to move with his kids back into his childhood home, where his mother still lives.

Next thing we know Etheline is at Margot's home trying to get into the bathroom to see her. She sits at the side of the tub while Margot watches TV and tells Margot that her brother Chas has moved home and that he seems depressed. Margot just about jumps out of the tub, announces she is depressed as well, packs up her TV and heads on home with her mother, leaving her husband stunned and stuttering at the door.

Shortly thereafter, Etheline runs into Royal as she's out walking and Royal announces he's been diagnosed with terminal cancer and has just six weeks left to live. He wants to spend his last days with his family. She's suspicious that he might be faking it, but she allows him back. Etheline notifies Richie by telegram that his father is dying, and he decides to return home as well.

The Tennenbaums are reunited. They've all been hurting and living marginal lives and seem to move back home with enthusiasm. Etheline seems to be the only one who has been living a rewarding life. She has been engulfed in the intellectual world, and has a constant, loving companion, a black gentleman, who is also her accountant, named Henry Sherman (Danny Glover).

The dynamics in the household are influenced by Chas who hates his father. Royal wants to bond and horse around with his grandchildren. Richie finally admits that he is in love with Margot and has struggled with that his whole life-in fact that is why he choked in the finals at age 27. Eli seems to have a romance going on with Margot as well and may be competing for her with Richie. All three grown kids resent Royal who was never there for them when they were young. At one point he says in exasperation, "Can't someone be a shit their whole life and want to repair the damage?" They do not let him make it up to them too easily.

Tell Me More About It: The Tennenbaums are so hysterically dysfunctional we love them. The narration in this movie is outstanding, side splitting funny. The dialogue is incredibly written with snap and wit. It moves so quickly at times, it will be necessary to see it again. This will no doubt be a cult film for its offbeat, depressingly funny humor and classic characterizations. Margot has one facial expression the entire movie-a somewhat fretful bored frown. Royal is trying hard to make it up and be a father worthy of his kids' love, yet he knows he's not really that great a guy and probably wouldn't even be making the effort if he didn't happen to have gone broke at the same time. Etheline is so preoccupied with her own life that she hardly notices her children at all.

The movie gets a bit confusing towards the end. Eli's role takes a strange twist that to me never seemed to be explained or work in the story. The narration hits its mark every time, delivering in an understated manner such bizarre and extraordinary occurrences. The world seems to revolve around these people; we never really experience anybody outside the family. They live in New York City though that`s hardly apparent. We don't feel the city (which is so hard to avoid in real life or even when filming in that city). There is marginal activity outside the dynamics of this family's internal interactions. The grown children are all so stuck, isolated and unproductive in their lives. It's never stated that this malaise comes from their father's abandonment. In fact it actually seems to come from their having no parenting. They were geniuses, and perhaps that made it easy to assume they could fend for themselves. Being geniuses, they were treated as adults as children. They pay the price for skipping their childhood, which is why they are compelled to return home and sort themselves out.

This is a witty movie with subtle perceptions and sophisticated humor. Unfortunately, it loses a little of that sophistication towards the end in an effort to tie up loose ends and resolve everyone's anger towards Royal. This movie clearly puts Wes Anderson, its director and writer (with actor/writer Owen Wilson), on the map of filmmakers to respect and anticipate. My next movie in fact will be Rushmore, written by the same Anderson and Wilson team and again directed by Anderson. This is one of the highlights of 2001 movies, which may, in spite of a disappointing Pearl Harbor and a strange A.I., be an accomplished year for interesting movies.

Gene Hackman: Heist	Ben Stiller: Meet The Parents
Gwyneth Paltrow: The Talented Mr. Ripley	Luke Wilson: Legally Blonde
Anjelica Houston: The Addams Family	Owen Wilson: Zoolander
Wes Anderson: Rushmore	Danny Glover: The Monster