The Royal Tenembaums

Finishing off right at the tail end of my winter break, I watched Royal Tenembaums. When I first watched this one, I wan’t a fan of it. And although it still doesn’t reach the top-tier Wes Anderson movies for me at this time, I appreciate it a lot more now. As I mentioned in my previous review of Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson has a distinct use of fantasy elements in most all of his stories. And although Bottle Rocket didn’t have any of that element, The Royal Tenembaums seemed to perfectly integrate that in an extremely grounded way. In a lot of ways, this is done through the use of the darkest themes in any Wes Anderson film. And sure, subtly, other Wes Anderson movies deal with some similarly dark subject matter, however Royal Tenembaums doesn’t hide it, rather, goes head first into dealing with the concept, which is something I greatly appreciated. The cast of characters were also a very strong aspect to this one. Anderson’s use of ensemble is easily at its best in Royal Tenembaums. Every character clearly has their own motives, purpose, and scars. Scars, both metaphorical and literal, are used as a heavy motif throughout. The biggest complaint I have with Royal Tenembaums, and I think is the thing that, at first, made me not like this movie all that much, is the slow pacing. Although I wouldn’t call Anderson’s movies fast paced, his style works best with a sense of ugency. Even though its slightly shorter than his longest film, Life Aquatic, it feels like it drags on just a tad too long. I don’t necessarily have an issue with slower movies, but when its meant to be a comedy, issues arise. Most jokes didn’t land for me, which isn’t out of the ordinary, but being that it was slower paced, there were scenes that I just wanted to finish sooner. So, although I thoroughly enjoyed quite a few aspects to Royal Tenembaums, the issues that I disliked my first watch around were still prominent, 7.5/10.