Critic Reviews
76
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
28(82%)
mixed
6(18%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 34 Critic Reviews
100
You'll laugh, you'll cry -- the year's best movie.
90
Anderson offers no phony uplift for the Tenenbaums or for audiences. But he does know how to take a sad song and make it better. In these troubled times, that's a gift.
90
In a film that verges on greatness, it is a sign of terrific faith, as well as of Anderson's promise as a director, that when one of the characters in The Royal Tenenbaums wears hospital pajamas after a detour into grief, the words over his heart read "recovery area."
90
May not be the movie of the year, but it is a seasonal gift to us all. Sweet and funny, doggedly oddball if bordering precious.
90
A very funny and painfully relevant two hours of entertainment.
90
Along with his writing partner, actor Owen Wilson, who also plays (hilariously) a supporting role in the film, Anderson reveals himself to be a highly original comic talent, impressive both for his strongly controlled deadpan style and for providing a sense of emotional heft lacking in most mainstream film comedies.
89
A big generational saga that woos the audience with its humor, spirit, style, and ability. Genius here is an evolutionary thing.
88
The performances are all terrific, but Gene Hackman is close to a career best as the family patriarch Royal, the most useless man you can't help loving.
88
More flat-out funny than "Rushmore," but in neither film is the humor joke-based. What you're laughing at is the behavior of characters who are so fixed in their idiosyncratic worldviews that they can't help but careen into each other like out-of-control bumper cars.
88
Once you're among them, the Tenenbaums -- and Anderson -- cast quite a spell.
