The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

USA 109m, Colour
Director: Wes Anderson; Cast: Alec Baldwin, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Andrew Wilson, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Danny Glover, Bill Murray

The Royal Tenenbaums is a dramatic comedy of an interesting family of oddball characters. The premise of this film is simple yet it provides an effective vehicle to support a large cast of characters and their hilariously absurd and intertwined personal stories. We meet the Tenenbaums, a rich misfit family with three genius children who are reunited when their estranged father returns home under the false pretenses – claiming that he is expected to die of cancer in a few short weeks. The film’s strength is the absurdity of its characters and some great dialogue and narration (Klaus Ming August 2009).