The Royal Tenenbaums. I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I didn’t find it funny. I didn’t find it enlightening. I’ve debated this, but I still see it as basically another naturalistic mood piece. I happen to like (I’ll take crap for this) Gene Hackman, and I like Anjelica Huston and (more crap coming, I know) Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love is one of my all time favorites, though perhaps she simply benefits from being in that one). Ben Stiller’s best role, imo, is still “The Screamer” (a Friend’s episode – the one where he yells viciously at everyone while playing the gentle soft male to Rachel, and they finally catch him in time for Chandler to say, “Back away from the duck.”.). But I kept looking for something in this film and, typical of naturalistic films, it kept promising, but it never paid off. Sure, there’s some kind of psychological resolution for each of the characters, so I can see the point of the person I argued this with, but then look what kind of resolution it is – it’s resolution without real meaning, imo. The incest part of it is certainly interesting, and that should have been the plot, I think.
