The Life Aquatic

[sfer]

Order of Wes Anderson movies, from best to worst:
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket
The Royals
Steve Z

Meh.

[uw_madtown]

Haven't seen Bottle Rocket yet, but I enjoyed LA more than Royal Tenenbaums. I'll probably be seeing it again though, so that might change.

I'm hearing a lot of mumbling about it from Anderson fans, but I think it may be a case of inflated expectations. It was still a very, very good film IMO, even if it wasn't everything I expected it to be.

[BusterStacks]

The Royal Tenenbaums was a steaming turd of a movie, likeable only by hipsters who felt there was some underlying message amidst the confusion and disappointment.

[private joker]

[ QUOTE ]
The Royal Tenenbaums was a steaming turd of a movie, likeable only by hipsters who felt there was some underlying message amidst the confusion and disappointment.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bullcrap.

[ QUOTE ]
With the kind of obseqious fawning that critics and fans alike are guilty of regarding Wes Anderson, a backlash against the Texas-born prodigy filmmaker seems imminent. There's nary a major media publication in the United States that hasnt hailed Anderson as the most awesome genius to send light through a lens and a box at 24 frames per second since D.W. Griffith. And since this kind of spectacular adoration often galvanizes its vocal detractors, vehement sour grapes may be fired like a missile at the virtuoso director.


But hold on to your trigger fingers -- with his third film The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson may not have concoted a cinematic cure for cancer, but he has made his finest film to date and one that, if evaluated objectively, almost justifies his inflated reputation. Anderson's first coup is assembling a talented and well-cast cadre of stars for his and co-writer Owen Wilson's multi-character comedy. Gene Hackman stars as the titular Royal Tenenbaum, an aging patriarch who claims he has six weeks to live, and in that time wants to earn back the love and respect of his estranged wife (Anjelica Huston), his two biological sons (Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson), and adopted daughter Gwyneth Paltrow. Also figuring into the deceptively rich story are Danny Glover as Huston's current suitor, Bill Murray as Paltrow's cuckolded husband, and Owen Wilson as a drug-addicted writer and close friend to the Tenenbaum children.


Although Murray and Stiller, two of Hollywoods sharpest comedic actors, are sadly wasted, Glover, Paltrow, and especially Hackman rise to the occasion. Hackman's straight-shooting cynic is mannered and silly, but the ubiquitous 71 year-old thespian still has enough energy and freshness to make the role his own -- Hackman fashions Royal as a likable crusty jerk who is more resistant to external change than he is his own internal character growth. It's a performance well worth the accolades it is sure to receive.


But the real star of the film, as it was with the solid but slightly overrated Rushmore, is Anderson and Wilson's writing. Re-imagining Shakespeare's King Lear and Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons as a post-modern ode to redemption, love, and the relativity of accomplishment, the screenplay is more than the sum of its isolated, entertaining sequences just as the Tenenbaum family is more than the sum of its individual units who fail when they lack connections to others. Despite the clearly dysfunctional nature of the clan, the further they are from each other and their emotions, the worse off their wealth and fame: two qualities that are supposedly characteristic of the remarkable Tenenbaum name. Paltrow's depressed, chain-smoking Margot is an award-winning playwright who suffers from disaffected infidelity due to the lack of love she has received from her father and brother. Luke Wilson's Richie is a tennis champion who suffers a meltdown on the court, and the subsequent demise of his career, upon the simple sight of Margot with her husband. The not-quite-incestual relationship between Richie and Margot is based not on familiarity or sexuality, but on a shared sense of abandonment.


Eldest child Stiller has become a successful entrepreneur, but after suffering the loss of his wife in a plane crash, has been left to care for his two sons, and his urge to be an over-protective and demanding father is clearly a reaction against the lack of protection and love he received from Royal during his early development. But the man most affected by Royal's dissection of the family is Royal himself -- once a wealthy upper-class New Yorker now demoted to working as an elevator operator to pay rent in a closet apartment. His greatest revelation is the recognition that his need to regain his financial success and social reputation is inextricably linked with the need to reunite his family and repent for a lifetime of cruelty and self-absorption.


Not that Anderson goes for glib sentimentality here; Royal never loses his edge even as he glues his broken character back together. He contributes to the delinquency of his grandsons by using them as accomplices in shoplifting, and he smugly disgraces his daughter in-laws death during a suggested trip to the cemetery ("I guess we can swing by her grave, too"). And even if all of his goals can't be achieved (Huston and Glovers courtship becomes difficult to disrupt despite Hackman's attempts at racist provocation), Royal's flawed reunion plan is still the most honest deed he's performed in his life, and earns the surprising but desired affection of his formidably resistant family.


The movie isn't without its flaws: Stiller's character has the least plausible turnaround and thus fails to earn his sympathy; a startling dramatic shift in tone regarding Luke Wilson's character interrupts the film's graceful pace; and the idiosyncracies (like having each character wear the same wardrobe for weeks on end, or engaging Murray, Glover, and Luke Wilson in a battle to see who can sport the most grizzly beard, or Hackman's back-stabbing but loyal ethnic sidekick) feel like quirks for the sake of having quirks. But while The Royal Tenenbaums isn't as immediately and consistently laugh-out-loud hilarious as Rushmore, it does demand considerable thought and reflection as well as a second viewing (no decent film can be thoroughly understood on one trip).


Anderson is developing himself here, even if he utilizes some identical visual gimmicks from the Max Fisher biopic: the chapter headings (like curtain reveals), the calligraphy-printed invitation cards, the library book motif, the use of go-carts set to raucous punk music, and centering his characters within a composition that provides distracting background information (here, it's the astounding Miguel Calderon paintings in Owen Wilson's house). Andersons maturation is in how he subtly underscores his message about the inescapable dangers of generation gaps, the failure to live up to inflated expectations, and the inevitable march towards death, with symbolic visual cues like Richie's pet bird, Margot's aged and hidden cigarettes, and the cramped confines of Richie and Margot's tent within the expansive Tenenbaum house. One cant help but think that the film is partially autobiographical, or at least inspired by some of the events Anderson must be going through these days. The young, brazen talent has made a film about talented children reconciling with their father (dont forget Rushmore's subplot involving the over-achieving Max and his humiliating barber dad) and the expectations heaped on those children -- perhaps critics of Anderson on both sides of the fence should take the fallout from Royal's misguided perceptions to heart.

[/ QUOTE ]

[BottlesOf]

False.

[J.R.]

I kinda agree. Unfortunately we can't (and perhaps shouldn't) come to expect Max Fischer's in every Anderson movie, but we can still sit back and laugh. There is a beauty, humor and wonder that can be found without delving beyond the superficial absurdity, although the impact and effect is far more fleeting. The first big budget can distract any young director from what really got him there. I think he spread himself a bit thin; hopefully this young one can only grow from the experience. But I still very much enjoyed it, although it hasn't quite stuck with me a week later. We can't lose our youthful innocence over and over.

[sfer]

[ QUOTE ]
...likeable only by hipsters...

[/ QUOTE ]

I love this phrase and the seething bitterness it implies. Viva humanity!

[NotMitch]

[ QUOTE ]
Order of Wes Anderson movies, from best to worst:
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket
The Royals
Steve Z

Meh.

[/ QUOTE ]


Agreed, and the gap between the bottom two is pretty large.

[Sooga]

Wow, you're the first person I've met who has ordered them the same as I have... and as an aside, for some strange reason, every time I see your avatar (which I assume is you) I think of Scott Van Pelt on Sportscenter.

[private joker]

[ QUOTE ]
Wow, you're the first person I've met who has ordered them the same as I have... and as an aside, for some strange reason, every time I see your avatar (which I assume is you) I think of Scott Van Pelt on Sportscenter.

[/ QUOTE ]

With his recent surge of popularity on Arrested Development, Celebrity Poker, and his huge hit comedy records, I'm amazed at how many people still don't recognize David Cross.

[Sooga]

Hmm.. I'll admit I've never even heard of him. Then again, I don't have cable, so I don't watch celebrity poker, and I don't watch Arrested Development, so I guess my chances to see him would be tiny, at best.

[Evan]

1. That really doesn't look like Scott Van Pelt
2. That looks way more like Scott Van Pelt than sfer

[manpower]

Well I just saw the fucker and I'll be honest; it wasn't horrendous. Of course it wasn't as good as I was hoping, nor was it as good as his others, but it was a fine movie. I mean come on, it still beats the [censored] out of most of the other crap coming out of hollywood.

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
Order of Wes Anderson movies, from best to worst:
Rushmore
Bottle Rocket
The Royals
Steve Z

Meh.

[/ QUOTE ]

I put Bottle Rocket first and leave the rest of the order the same.

The gap between RoyalT and SteveZ is huge.

Also, for the most part the use of music was great, but the Sigur Ros song at the end was all wrong. The song was way too good and the scene was way too bad--just made the movie's failures even more glaring...

scrub

[MarkL444]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, for the most part the use of music was great, but the Sigur Ros song at the end was all wrong. The song was way too good and the scene was way too bad--just made the movie's failures even more glaring...

[/ QUOTE ]

why was the scene way too bad?

[scrub]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also, for the most part the use of music was great, but the Sigur Ros song at the end was all wrong. The song was way too good and the scene was way too bad--just made the movie's failures even more glaring...

[/ QUOTE ]

why was the scene way too bad?

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it was that the ensemble shot was representative of the rest of the movie for me, or at least that it reminded me too much of the failures of the movie.

Also, I thought that a lot of that absurd looking animation worked much better with the Bowie covers that had a sense of camp than with the Sigur Ros music, which doesn't.

scrub

[Tron]

"Is that my espresso machine? How did you get it?"
"We f*ckin' stole it, man."

[sfer]

That was pretty funny.