I took another little detour into the films (at least the three that I own) of Wes Anderson recently and, as always, they wound up being as funny and charming as I remember them.
From The Royal Tennenbaums to The Life Aquatic to The Darjeeling Limited, all of these movies from Anderson (as well as Rushmore, which I really need to just go buy) are primarily about absentee parental figures and how grown children, either by themselves or in a group, go about trying to surmount the problems that emotional or physical abandonment has left them with.
Tennenbaums is consistently my favorite of the batch, largely because the ensemble cast is just about perfect in all regards. Ben Stiller and Gwenyth Paltrow add some wonderful notes to Anderson regulars Luke and Owen Wilson and Bill Murray. And this might be my favorite Gene Hackman performance of all time because - and stay with me here - he plays Royal in the same way that Leslie Nielsen plays the doctor in Airplane!: Completely straight. It would be easy for him to do everything with tongue firmly in cheek but he resists that temptation and it works far better than it otherwise would have.
While some think Darjeeling was pretty weak it actually winds up being the second best of the three, at least upon this particular viewing. it’s good to see Jason Schwartzman back in front of the camera and he plays off Owen Wilson and Adrian Brody well, the three very much acting like a bunch of estranged brothers. it also hits another constant Anderson theme, that of the unattainable woman, an idea that runs through all of his movies.
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Chris Thilk