Prioritizing what to watch is one of the great challenges of the modern streaming age. Streaming puts an entire world of movies at your fingertips, and one of the best ways to decide which ones to watch is to select from the movies that will be leaving a given service soon.
The Royal Tenenbaums is set to leave Amazon Prime Video at the end of March, which is why now is the perfect time to check out one of Gene Hackman’s great screen performances. Directed by Wes Anderson, the movie follows a family of child geniuses as they gather as adults following the news that their father is sick. Here are three reasons you should check it out:
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It’s not as insular as some Wes Anderson movies
Anyone who has ever seen a Wes Anderson movie is well aware that the director likes to make movies that are set in their own worlds. As he’s gotten more and more money, his films have felt more and more removed from the real world. The Royal Tenenbaums sits at a perfect axis for people who are slightly turned off by Anderson’s overly designed worlds.
The movie was obviously shot in the real New York City, but it still has all of Anderson’s signature framings and plenty of intentional craft. It’s a movie that no one else could have made but one that still feels more grounded in reality than many of Anderson’s later movies.
Gene Hackman is unbelievable in it
Wes Anderson prefers a flat, affectless performance style from his actors, and most of the performances in The Royal Tenenbaums fit that mold, which isn’t to say that those performances aren’t good. Gene Hackman is one of just a few performers who is simply too good an actor to totally disappear into Anderson’s universe.
As Royal, Hackman is brimming with pain and life, a man who spent decades being too selfish to care about his family who suddenly realizes he wants to spend time with them more than anything in the world. It’s a moving, brilliant performance and a perfect capstone on a legendary career.
The movie is emotionally naked
Anderson has gained a following in part because of his cold, calculating style, but The Royal Tenenbaums combines that style with some fairly conventional storytelling. Fundamentally, this is a film about three children reconciling with their father and each other and coming to appreciate the man he is, imperfect though he might be.
The movie’s final moments, which feature a devastating line reading from Ben Stiller and a final smile from Hackman, are almost guaranteed to make you well up, even if you didn’t think the movie was getting to you in quite the way it ultimately does.
Stream The Royal Tenenbaums on Prime Video.
