The Royal Tenenbaums

The Royal Tenenbaums is the film where Wes Anderson became Wes Anderson — the moment his visual style, literary ambitions, and deadpan melancholy fused into something that could not be mistaken for anyone else's work. Gene Hackman plays Royal Tenenbaum, a disbarred attorney and absent father who fakes a terminal illness to reconnect with his three gifted children, all of whom peaked in childhood and have spent their adult lives failing to live up to their early promise.

Hackman's performance is the greatest of his career — and possibly the greatest performance in any Wes Anderson film. Royal is a liar, a cheat, a terrible father, and somehow the most alive person in a family of depressives. He is the agent of chaos who breaks through the Tenenbaum paralysis, and Hackman plays him with a twinkle that makes his worst behavior almost forgivable. Almost.

The ensemble — Luke Wilson's suicidal Richie, Gwyneth Paltrow's secretive Margot, Ben Stiller's rage-filled Chas — is Anderson's finest. The Elliott Smith needle drops. The Dalmatian mice. The tent scene. The film's treatment of depression, failure, and family dysfunction is more honest than most dramas, and its comedy makes that honesty bearable. Anderson proved that style is not the opposite of substance. In the right hands, style IS substance.