I'm going to have to stop reviewing films, because I only go to see the ones I know I'm going to really like, and then I really like them, and then I have to face this traumatic judgement call whereby you the reader must be told just enough about the film to make you go and see it, but not so much that it is spoiled for you. And I have to keep recycling my superlatives. It's a tough life.

The curious thing about The Royal Tenenbaums is that it's very crude and very subtle at the same time. Sick humour and genuine emotion combine in a way that only seems unlikely in retrospect. Maybe because that's how "real life" often is, but is seldom shown to be.

These characters, however, are, well, perhaps not larger than life, but definitely odder. The film watches Mr Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), trying to re-establish himself with his long-suffering wife and variously traumatised offspring. The humour comes from the sheer depth of his incompetence and duplicity as he sets about this, and also from mescaline-munching family friend Eli (Owen Wilson), who is so far off the map that he probably has his own bed in the cartographer's home.

You also get Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Danny Glover, Bill Murray (so restrained that just the twinkly-eyed possibility of his bursting forth is entertainment) and others, all combining effortlessly with the narrator, the slick yet pointy script and the curious, but agreeable, "book chapters" device.

So all the eventual unlikely redemption and reunion doesn't seem facile and contrived and annoying, but instead vaguely inevitable and actually very moving because it's what all the characters want, and they are believable and likeable enough, in their own quirky ways, to make it matter. They aren't odd just for laughs, they're odd because they're hurt. (And it's funny)

As it all veers skilfully between tragedy and comedy, you often don't know quite what you're meant to be feeling. That this seems novel is evidence of just how frequently your emotions are crudely shepherded around by your entertainment. It's nice to be treated, for a change, like an adult, albeit a slightly twisted one.

Ian Threadgill 24/05/02