page_title: The Royal Tenenbaums
section_title: Critical response
hierarchical_section_title: The Royal Tenenbaums / Reception / Critical response
caption_attribution_description: Wes Anderson in Berlin 2005.
context_page_description: The Royal Tenenbaums is a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson and co-written with Owen Wilson. It stars Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson. Ostensibly based on a nonexistent novel, and told with a narrative influenced by the writing of J.D. Salinger, it follows the lives of three gifted siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure in adulthood. The children's eccentric father Royal Tenenbaum leaves them in their adolescent years, then returns to them after they have grown, falsely claiming he has a terminal illness. He eventually reconciles with his children and ex-wife.
  With a variety of influences, including Louis Malle's 1963 film The Fire Within and Orson Welles' 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons, the story involves themes of the dysfunctional family, lost greatness, and redemption. An absurdist and ironic sense of humor pervades the film, which features a soundtrack subsequently released in two albums.
  The Royal Tenenbaums was shot in and around New York City, including a house in Harlem used for the Tenenbaum residence.
context_section_description: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 202 reviews, and an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "The Royal Tenenbaums is a delightful adult comedy with many quirks and a sense of poignancy. Many critics especially praised Hackman's performance." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 76 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C–" on an A+ to F scale. 
  At its premiere at the New York Film Festival, A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times that it eventually won him over as charming, and that Hackman brought "quick precision and deep seriousness [that] nearly rescue[d] this movie from its own whimsy". Variety's Todd McCarthy described the film, "As richly conceived as the novel it pretends to be."Richard Schickel of Time wrote, "As with Anderson's Rushmore, there's a certain annoying preciousness to this film—it's not so consistently wise or amusing as he thinks it is—but it has its moments". Roger Ebert awarded it three-and-a-half stars, admiring how viewers can be ambiguous to the events in the story. The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle was enthusiastic praising the film as "like no other, an epic, depressive comedy, with lots of ironic laughs and a humane and rather sad feeling at its core". Anthony Lane commented in The New Yorker on the setting, which did not truly feel like New York, but "a step-city, or a city-in-law", and said that "the communal oddity" gradually won him over. The New York Post's Lou Lumenick hailed it as "the year's best movie" and "possibly the most quintessential New York film since Manhattan". Peter Travers found all the cast great in different ways, while singling out Hackman. L.A. Weekly's Manohla Dargis wrote it had enough laughs to be classified as a comedy, but it contained "a deep vein of melancholia to its drollery". The Guardian's Joe Queenan embraced it as a "bizarre redemption tale".
  Some critics disagreed about the success of the film and its style. New York's Peter Rainer wrote, "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." In the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan assessed the film as indulging too far in Anderson's vision, creating an unknown world. In his 2015 Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave it two-and-a-half stars, complimenting the eccentricity, but finding no storyline.
  Time listed Royal Tenenbaums in its Top 10 Troubled Genius Films list in 2009, comparing Anderson's characters to Salinger's, in an "ultimately touching package". In 2013, Time also named Henry Sherman as one of 10 memorable accountant characters in film history, citing his decency, success as an author and lack of confidence in his pursuit of Etheline. In 2014, The Huffington Post journalist Lisa Thomson evaluated it as one of Anderson's best films, and that finding laughs in divorce was a highlight. In 2017, Vanity Fair cited Richie's tennis meltdown scene as one of the best tennis scenes in cinema history, making an analogy to Björn Borg.
  In 2008, a poll taken by Empire ranked The Royal Tenenbaums as the 159th greatest film ever made. A 2016 poll of international critics assembling BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century also voted it one of the 100 greatest motion pictures since 2000. Hackman has received kudos for his performance. In 2015, IndieWire named Royal as Anderson's most memorable character, crediting Hackman for bringing the character beyond the director's norm; the same list also named Margot "the ur-Anderson female" character.
caption: Critics debated the merits of Wes Anderson's style.
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