Wes Anderson Reviews

IT'S ALL IN THE GENE Hackman gives his kids the ''Royal'' treatment

The Royal Tenenbaums: James Hamilton

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Wes Anderson

The Royal Tenenbaums

There's a glamour in the too-smart/beautiful/talented-for-your-own-good ennui that Wes Anderson lovingly lingers on in his charming, Salingeresque The Royal Tenenbaums (cowritten with star Owen Wilson), about a family of prodigies coming to terms with the compromises of adulthood. In a timeless almost-New York, the Tenenbaum offspring -- glum, raccoon-eyed playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), neurotic financial whiz Chas (Ben Stiller), and suicidal has-been tennis ace Richie (Luke Wilson) -- suffer the damage caused by early fame and abandonment by their force-of-life father, Royal.

As the suave lawyer-turned-con man who suddenly wants back into his estranged family, Gene Hackman embodies a wonderful combination of inevitability and surprise, whether he's sweet-talking his ex (Anjelica Huston) or taking his overprotected grandkids on a garbage-truck joyride. (Bill Murray, who appears here as Margot's cuckolded husband, showed similar comic vigor in Anderson's ''Rushmore.'') If ''Tenenbaums'' suffers slightly, it's from its own sense of nostalgia. The film is so in love with its quirky clan of exquisite failures that it -- like the characters -- prefers a fond look back to moving forward.