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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Royal Tenenbaums, The
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 126 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Wes Anderson
Owen Wilson
Directed by: Wes Anderson
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 14, 2001
DVD: July 9, 2002
Running Time: 108 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for some language, sexuality/nudity and drug content
Starring Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, and Bill Murray
The story of the Tenenbaum family's sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter. (Touchstone Pictures)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Bottle Rocket Rushmore The Darjeeling Limited The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Village Voice J. Hoberman
May not be the movie of the year, but it is a seasonal gift to us all. Sweet and funny, doggedly oddball if bordering precious.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Ron Wells
A very funny and painfully relevant two hours of entertainment.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Anderson offers no phony uplift for the Tenenbaums or for audiences. But he does know how to take a sad song and make it better. In these troubled times, that's a gift.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Manohla Dargis
In a film that verges on greatness, it is a sign of terrific faith, as well as of Anderson's promise as a director, that when one of the characters in The Royal Tenenbaums wears hospital pajamas after a detour into grief, the words over his heart read "recovery area."
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
A big generational saga that woos the audience with its humor, spirit, style, and ability. Genius here is an evolutionary thing.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Exists on a knife edge between comedy and sadness. There are big laughs, and then quiet moments when we're touched.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Mark Caro
More flat-out funny than "Rushmore," but in neither film is the humor joke-based. What you're laughing at is the behavior of characters who are so fixed in their idiosyncratic worldviews that they can't help but careen into each other like out-of-control bumper cars.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
Once you're among them, the Tenenbaums -- and Anderson -- cast quite a spell.
Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
A devastatingly funny portrait of a wildly dysfunctional clan, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums is a movie about how people never really mature in ways that matter.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The performances are all terrific, but Gene Hackman is close to a career best as the family patriarch Royal, the most useless man you can't help loving.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Underachieves in its own way by trapping an expansive, probing story in a brittle, highly artificial style that constricts character and emotional development.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It's a B+, not an A. This would be enough for most filmmakers. But Anderson must contend with a higher standard. It's his fault for being original.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
This is not a movie that wraps up its story in a tidy bow, but it's a lot more fun than most of the ones that do.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Hackman gives the con-man lines a simple, straight-ahead urgency that makes the man first hilarious and then, as the pleasures of human company are withdrawn and his resentment begins to bubble up, inexplicably touching. This is a great performance.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
Spend an eveing with some of Edward Gorey's writings and drawings, rub against the velvet of his lugubrious wit, and you will be ready for Royal and the clan. [17 Dec 2001, p. 97]
Time Richard Schickel
For Hackman embodies the energy and outrage the rest of this rather twee family lacks. Royal stirs them all to life, and this great, bumptious performance by an actor gleefully rediscovering his funny bone stirs us to appreciative life too.
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Anderson's cinematic style gets more adventurous from one movie to the next, and he begins this story with bursts of originality that leave his respected "Rushmore" far behind.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Might have been about the rise and fall of a family of gifted children. That would have been the typical way to approach the story. Instead, it's something rare -- a movie about people who have already fallen, whose best days are behind them.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It makes for chuckling entertainment and it's fun to watch as it's happening. But its New York characters are not a bit believable, there's no real bite to the humor, and the film never adds up to be more than the sum of its parts.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
Isn't nearly the landmark comedy it thinks it is, but its quirkiness should appeal to the highbrow funny bone in all of us.
The New York Times Dana Stevens
At once endearing and unbearably show-offy, it seems to be the product of a sensibility formed by age-inappropriate reading.
Read Full Review >New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky
One expects more from writer-director Wes Anderson (and his co-scribbler, Owen Wilson) than such frivolous fun that bears no lingering effect.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Over the course of 108 minutes, The Royal Tenenbaums drops downward on the humor scale from hilarious to funny to quirky to pretentiously bizarre to chaotic.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The film grows on you, but more substance and less calculated quirks would have been a royal treat.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Jay Carr
There are laughs in it. But mostly you sit around waiting for it to be funnier, or at least funny more often. The problem is that it hasn't figured out a way to be funny while satisfyingly accommodating the pain in these characters.
Newsweek David Ansen
In the antic, melancholy comedy The Royal Tenenbaums, the singular Wes Anderson (“Rushmore”) abandons his native Texas for a storybook vision of New York.
New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Anderson is something of a prodigy himself, and he's riddled with talent, but he hasn't figured out how to be askew and heartfelt at the same time. When he does, he'll probably make the movie The Royal Tenenbaums was meant to be, and it'll be a sight to see.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
Absurdist, but also condescending and self-infatuated; The Royal Tenenbaums is at least three times too clever for its own good.
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Director Wes Anderson, who also co-wrote the "Royal" script with actor Owen Wilson, unquestionably has one of America's most distinctive filmmaking sensibilities, but that is part of the problem. As my mother used to say, too good is no good.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Anderson's other hallmarks here are brilliant gags that deflate in the execution, potentially interesting characters that end up so flat they feel as if they'd been cut out of paper, a plot that's all setup and no story.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 126 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Patrick B gave it a10:
If you want a movie filled with cheap laughs,silly slapstick humor, or fart jokes, don't watch this movie! It's a sophisticated comedy/drama that makes me teary even after watching it dozens of times. The acting is spot on, the soundtrack is superb, and Wes Anderson's directing has never been so flawless. This is my favorite movie and it deserves to be worshiped.
Harry gave it a9:
This movie snuck by me and i never knew it was in theaters, but i watched it on comedy central and it was great.
Wes M. gave it a9:
Hipster sensibility wears a bit, but it's consistently funny.
[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Only to be topped by Rushmore, this film is Wes Anderson at his finest. I could not believe that 0 I saw on ROYAL T.'s review. It also saddens me that somebody could see this movie and not thoroughly enjoy it.
[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Only to be topped by Rushmore, this film is Wes Anderson at his finest. I could not believe that 0 I saw on ROYAL T.'s review. It also saddens me that somebody could see this movie and not thoroughly enjoy it.
Emma G. gave it a9:
Simply delightful! i enjoyed every minute of this splendid film and the splendid acting in it. one of the funniest and best films ive ever seen
[Anonymous] gave it a10:
I guess all the people that gave it low scores must be into comedy movies like "Harold and Kumar go to white castle"...nice. just because you didn't understand it or there weren't large explosions or jokes about boobs doesn't mean it was a bad movie. get culture people...get culture.
