The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

This is an okay movie. Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) had two sons and an adopted daughter who were all very intelligent. Chas (Ben Stiller) started buying real estate in his early teens, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright, and Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior champion tennis player. Virtually all evidence of their brilliance was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal and failure, blamed on their father.

The story gives a bizarre account of a dysfunctional family. Alec Baldwin is the narrator. The characters are based on the Glass family in four of J.D. Salinger's novels. It was also influenced by the 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons. Wes Anderson's mother also took up archaeology after her divorce. Henry Sherman is the name of Wes Anderson's former landlord. The subplot in which Margot and Richie hide in a museum is a homage to the 1967 book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg.