The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Not many films manage to achieve the goal of creating successful and meaningful drama while inflating the movie with perfect comedy to avoid it getting too gritty. The Royal Tenenbaums pulls this off to a level of perfection unparalleled to any other movie I've ever seen. Wes Anderson does a fantastic job with the directing, and his screenplay, co-written by the film's star Owen Wilson, is so detailed and so perfected that it almost seems like you have known these angst-driven characters all your life.

The Royal Tenenbaums is centered around a dysfunctional New York family, who had three genius children before their parents Royal and Etheline (Gene Hackman, who win a Golden Globe, so breathtaking is his performance, and Anjelica Huston) split up. The three children have gone on different paths: Ritchie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) has given up his champion tennis player career; Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) has stopped writing plays, married a much older man (Bill Murray) and cut herself off from society in a bathroom; whereas Chas (Ben Stiller) has become extremely over-protective of his children after his wife died in a plane crash. Royal, broke and lonely, seeks to make up for lost time with his broken family and feigns terminal stomach cancer to win their affections back.

The Royal Tenenbaums is a truly magical film, bursting with lots of feel-good moments and an unbelievable soundtrack. Such loving detail doth grasps the writing that although the film may seem deceptively simple on the surface, it may take a couple of viewings to really get into it. Each character is thought out to a ridiculous degree that there is something to root for in each one of them. Bill Murray, the comedy genius of our time, shines in his surprisingly small, but nevertheless superb, supporting role. Although all the supporting cast, such as Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow and Owen Wilson, give sterling performances, it's Hackman who steals the show as the only Tenenbaum able to crack a smile through the whole movie. However, Luke Wilson comes very close, giving his all-time greatest performance, especially in the deadly bathroom scene (I won't give it away, but beware!).

You will never look at your family in the same way once you've seen this movie. You'll appreciate them so much you'll run home after seeing this movie and give them all a hug. If that don't tickle your pickle, there's still loads more to earn from seeing this movie. My advice to all movie-goers -- SEE THIS MOVIE!!! You're never gonna regret it!