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Originally Posted by Alex's Trip
I don't think that you can say that for The Royal Tenenbaums though. None of it was at all realistic. A family full of geniuses? A professional tennis player, a playwright, and a business man all at very young ages (and a mescaline addicted author, if you count Eli Cash). None of that was supposed to be realistic, and neither were the issues in that family.
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I know enough families who basically breed success to say that the situation of the Tenenbaum family wasn't what motivated me to to call it a movie that tries to be realistic but fails. When I say realistic in this case, what I mean is that the problems they face in the movie are ones that aren't too often portrayed in more mainstream movies. And because there's rarely anything "real" about blockbuster movies, when you do find a movie that actually does talk about family dysfunction of whatever type, it's often praised for its realism. And that movie was mainstream enough for me to be able to compare it to big box office movies. So take for example the issue of incest in that movie--it's not a topic you hear a lot about in the really popular movies, but that doesn't mean a movie is being "unrealistic" if it addresses the issue. What I'm talking about, when I'm referring to realism, isn't so much the situations the characters find themselves in, but rather how they react in those situations. So I really couldn't care less about them being a family of geniuses or whatever, and still having a shitload of problems, because that's fine and doesn't really have an impact on the realistic qualities of the movie as I see it. It could be set in space for all I care. I just didn't feel for the characters, is what it comes down to. Yes, I know it's supposed to be a dark comedy, or whatever, but I've seen enough of those in the past to know when it works and when it doesn't work. The Royal Tenenbaums didn't work for me. And that other movie with the long title definitely didn't work for me either.