The ROYAL TENENBAUMS board

Wes Anderson's THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS was my favorite movie of 2001. I loved Gene Hackman's character and I loved how the story was told.

 

dicuss the movie. not a fan club.

 

Okay, I've got something to discuss. Why was Ben Stiller's character, Chas, so hard on his dad? He seems to have been so serious his whole life. Is the bee-bee shooting incedent and the neglect his father showed towards him the reason? My guess is yes. Chas doesn't seem to be the type of person to forgive easily.

 

Yeah, I'd say the lifetime of neglect and the general sense that his father didn't really love him built up Chas hostility toward his dad. I mean, what else do you need? Royal Tenenbaum has trouble w/just about all his relations b/c he gives off the air that as long as he's having fun and his satisfied, the feelings of others really doesn't matter.

I'm assuming people have seen the movie...


But the best moment for me w/Chas and Royal was just after the car crash when Chas says, "I've had a rough year, dad."

An excellent delivery on Ben Stiller's part of a very simple but perfectly excellent line that just sums up the traumatic, neurotic, chaotic mess Chas has been in since his wife died. He also uses that moment to share w/his dad just how vulnerable he has been since her death. And considering that Chas designed his whole life since his wife's death so that he could be indestructible, it's a huge step.

So..er..in short, I really loved that part.

 

Yeah, Ben really did a great job with that line. It deepened his character a great deal. According to Wes Anderson's commentary on the DVD Ben wanted to make sure they had more camera coverage for that part, not just the big crane and dolly for that long shot going across the fire truck.

 

It was one of my favorites last year. You're right about Ben Stiller I never really thought of him as an actor before. But Ben starting show he can pull off some depth.


And it should also get an honorable mention for best tag line:

Family isn't a word...it's a sentence.

 

I loved this movie too ~~ I especially enjoyed Gwyneth Paltrow's character and the interaction between Gene Hackman, Anjelica Houston and Danny Glover...

 

Royal T set a new standard, imo. The screenplay was very inventive and different, and the director managed just enough unreal, stylized elements to make it seem like some sort of fairytale with enough real emotionally relevance in the characters to make it believable and identifiable with your own unique family dynamics...

I really loved it. It will be one of those films that i can watch over and over again without ever getting bored, which is a real feat i think.

btw, amidala, that's my fave line too

 

"The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. "Vamanos, amigos," he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."

 

What's it about?

 

"We all know that Custer died at Litte Big Horn, but what my book presurposes is that; maybe he didn't ?"

 

Please do more than just quote from the Royal Tenenbaums. If you'd like to do that, feel free to take it to the YJCC, but the Amphitheatre is here for discussion of topics, not random quotes. Thank you.

 

what I would like to know is what Margot saw in that psychiatrist (psychologist?)....what did she have in that relationship that made her marry him??

(I too really enjoyed this movie)

 

In my opinion she was looking for a father figure. Royal had not been there for her, and so she had sought out a figure to replace him, hence the man so much older than herself. Which is also, I think, part of the reason that as she and her family started to get closer she would pull away from her husband.

I also think that may have been why she was distant to him in the first place. She my have been looking for a father figure, but she also had a lot of distrust directed towards that figure. She was probably transferring a lot of her feelings for her father on to the man she had found to try and replace him.