"The Royal Tenenbaums" (2002) Directed by Wes Anderson

“In fact, virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two decades of betrayal, failure and disaster”.

Narrated by Alec Baldwin throughout, Wes Anderson’s third cinematic offering opens as you’d expect, with an overhead shot of a book. Which is upside down, naturally! The book is “The Royal Tenenbaums” and it’s being checked out of a library and we continue the book theme as a title slide of “Prologue” appears which is clearly a page from the aforementioned book. Cue an instrumental version of The Beatles “Hey Jude” and sit back, relax and enjoy another Wes Anderson master class of melancholic madness, surrealist satire and heart warming humour. The opening seven and a half minutes has it all: beautiful sweeping camera shots, straight on unemotional character shots, close ups on ordinary everyday items, zoom push ins and out on characters and title slides, lots and lots of title slides, from “Chas’ Room (2nd Floor)” to “Financial Magazines” to “Library of Plays” and “Models of Sets” to name just a few. Oh, and a champion tennis player, a cold and deadpan Father, a loving and devoted Mother, a highly ambitious and successful young boy, a 9th Grade Playwright, a missing finger, a failed painter and a very awkward Birthday. And some survivors on “crackers and root beer” and a Falcon named Mordecai! As Mordecai takes flight and is captured beautifully by a slowly moving sweeping camera, The Beatles reach their well known and crowd pleasing crescendo and the continuing theme of the book returns with another title slide “Cast of Characters (22 Years Later)

The above paragraphs are taken from my original spoiler free review of "The Royal Tenenbaums" which was originally penned and published some years ago and transferred to my Medium blog site on 21st January 2021. This spoiler free review is also contained within my "essential film reviews collection". Each volume and e-book is £4.99 however, should you have an Amazon Kindle "Unlimited" package, all volumes are available to read for free:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0C4HZSTTH?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_a_lnk&storeType=ebooks

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