By Tammy Ashworth (February 8, 2002)

My friends and I exchanged looks of trepidation as we walked into a nearly empty theater to see The Royal Tenenbaums this past weekend. The few and lackluster trailers we encountered in the previews didn’t inspire the birth of any greater confidence either. But within the first fifteen minutes of the film, we discovered just how wrong we had been.

Putting a refreshing new spin on an old theme, The Royal Tenenbaums paints the classic portrait of the dysfunctional family unit: Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) separate, leaving Etheline to raise the couple’s three children – Chas, Margot and Richie – alone.

In the two decades between their separation and the events of the movie, the Tenenbaum children, once hailed as geniuses, have fallen from grace. Chas (Ben Stiller) was a financial guru; Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a young playwright; and Richie (Luke Wilson), a promising tennis champ. But years of pain, secrecy, and betrayal have chiseled away at the Tenenbaums’ reputations, just as they have damaged the family’s relationships with one another.

The story unfolds as the Tenenbaum children find themselves unexpectedly reunited under Etheline’s roof once more, each struggling to overcome their failures, by returning to where all their problems began – home. Much to everyone’s surprise, Royal too returns home, but with a very different kind of need. Broke, homeless, and scheming as always, Royal tries to resume a normal life with his family, but is it too late to fix the mistakes of the past?

The Royal Tenenbaums is a surprisingly smart and original film that has you laughing even in its darkest moments. Its directors manage to strike an artful balance between humor and poignancy, while avoiding the banality that seems to plague other movies of this genre. In short, this film is anything but your typical dysfunctional family comedy, and a definite must-see for any moviegoer.