The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums
January 4, 2002
Touchstone
Comedy
DVD
B

This is the only Wes Anderson movie I own, though I've seen others.  At that, this Criterion edition was a gift.  I liked the movie when it came out and I still like it.  I admire the attention to detail and the offbeat sense of humor, and sense of everything else.  But it's not really a movie I can warm up to.  In fact, I probably like it better in pieces-- from the game closet to individual lines-- more than I do as a whole.    Anderson wanted to make it a New York movie in a literary, almost fairytale, way, and so this is and is not the New York that was or was about to be shattered by September 11th.  It is a very visual, almost theatrical movie, and yet it also feels like J.D. Salinger and John Irving collaborated on a reboot of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Luke Wilson is almost unrecognizable here compared to in Legally Blonde, particularly when he's got long hair, a beard, and sunglasses.  Gwyneth Paltrow is much better here than she was as Emma, with a very deadpan delivery.  Bill Murray's role as Paltrow's husband, Raleigh St. Clair, is far from my favorite, but as always he adds something to the proceedings.  I don't have Owen Wilson in any of my other movies, but it is interesting how he (in a script he cowrote with Anderson) plays a family friend, while Ben Stiller (in a curly wig and red jumpsuit) plays the other Tenenbaum child.

William Sturgis was Elliot's Analyst in Hannah and Her Sisters and is Franklin Benedict here.  Andrew Wilson (older brother to Luke and Owen) was a School Guard in Never Been Kissed and plays both Farmer Father and Tex Hayward here.  Kevin Kean Murphy, who's an Archaeologist here, would be an Interview subject in Kinsey.  Lian Moy is a Patron here and would be a Student in School of Rock.  Amir Raissi, who's one of Eli's Egyptian Friends, would be a dancer in Enchanted.

The real star of the movie is the house.

Emma

Emma
August 30, 1996
Miramax
Comedy, Romance, Historical
VHS
C+

While on the surface this may seem like a faithful adaptation of the Austen novel, I find it much less in the spirit than Clueless, not to mention the contemporary Kate Beckinsale TV-movie.  I'm going to have to blame writer-director Douglas McGrath for the main flaws: general miscasting (especially of Harriet), a cutesy device of a sentence being started in one scene ("So then I said....") and then finished in the next ("How delightful!"), and the shafting of the Frank Churchill/ Jane Fairfax subplot.  (Enchanted April's Polly Walker and 25-year-old Ewan McGregor both do their best, but they're given little to work with and are misdirected in most of what they do get.)

That said, there are moments when the film forgets its own unnecessary flourishes and focuses on Austen's still great dialogue and plotting.  Even if the cast isn't quite right, it is an interesting assemblage, including 23-year-old Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role (sufficiently British but too pouty), 31-year-old Alan Cumming as Mr. Elton, and of course Emma Thompson's mother and 34-year-old sister as Mrs. and Miss Bates.  I have to note that Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley and Greta Scacchi as Mrs. Weston are both much more interesting and attractive than anyone else in the movie, and I would've actually rather have watched a far from canonical backstory of them being in love ten or fifteen years earlier.