This is a review of the Royal Tenenbaums written by Goose:

With his latest film, The Royal Tenenbaums, writer and director Wes Anderson has created as much a musical as he has a comedy-drama hybrid, one that finds its Busby Berkeley dances in detailed set designs and its "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "White Christmas" in rock songs released thirty years ago. None of the characters burst into song, no strangers collapse in a series of choreographed shuffles - but, like a musical, The Royal Tenenbaums possesses a certain fantastic beauty. Unattainable in the world it creates, the logic of its clockwork illogical to our rhythms, The Royal Tenenbaums leaves the viewer like a wallflower at a high school dance. We want desperately to be a part of its New York City but we are also hyperaware of the utter falseness of it all. People simply do not ribbon into song - the world of The Tenenbaums is pure, candied cinema. Anderson wants us to believe that his film is an adaptation of a book of the same name. As viewers, we take his book out of the library, watch as its time with us is dated like a carton of milk, and embrace its plastic cover even though we know it will never truly be ours. The Tenenbaums were a family of precious children - Chas (Ben Stiller) a stalwart businessman, Margot (Gwenyth Palrow) a playwright, and Richie (Luke Wilson) a painter and champion tennis player. The parents, Royal (Gene Hackman) and Etheline (Anjelica Huston), separated before the children were teenagers. A life in the spotlight also became a life arrested, distorted in time, leaving the Tenenbaum children tortured and depressed 22 years later, each one subject to the annals of neuroses and loneliness. Margot, always singled out as "the adopted one," withdraws into classical Franny and Zooey rebirth mode, spending hours in the bathtub with only a tiny television set to keep her company - sulking adolescent at age 34. Chas is still angry with his father, who repeatedly stole and cheated him, while Richie drifts off to sea on an ocean liner, himself adrift in a misbegotten love for his sister. Royal is no better off; broke and hearing of Etheline's engagement to her business partner, he announces he has six weeks left to live. And so The Royal Tenenbaums begins, with all the children returning home, forced to deal with Royal, with one another and with themselves. There is nothing particularly nail-biting about the plot. We no more anticipate shocks and surprises from it than we would the Ramones slowing down every once and awhile, and whatever cliffhanger there might have been dissipates like Nico's shivering voice. But it rises as if it were a calculated pop hit and everything is perfectly in tune, in place. This is demonstrated perfectly in the series of scenes following the first flashback. Anderson introduces us to each character, preparing for his or her day: here is Etheline twisting a pencil into her hair; here is Chas, shaving with his two children. Each one is simultaneously the actor and the character, Huston staring deep into the camera and Etheline mugging at herself in the mirror. The Tenenbaums is fully aware of the cinema it has created, and thus Huston does not so much become Etheline as merely plays her, plays some sort of generic caricature. This duality is emphasized by the fact that the characters are not only preparing for their day, but also preparing for their life. After all, every time we see them they are wearing the same clothes. They are cartoon characters, like Marge Simpson in her green dress and pearls or Fred Flintstone in his animal skin toga. The Tenenbaums has been criticized for relying on arch caricatures instead of characters, but Anderson never pretends he is doing anything but - he is bringing his imaginary book to life, literally, and everything is paper-thin accordingly. But Anderson avoids creating merely a whimsy, airy film through his soundtrack, which rounds out the preciousness with the few, sweeping chords of the Ramones' "Judy Was a Punk" and the gentle flutter of the Velvet Underground's "Stephanie Says." The Royal Tenenbaums would not glide so beautifully if it weren't for its soundtrack. The songs and the film feed off one another. The songs are at once internal monologues and parts of the set's exterior; they both self-possessed and self-conscious, like Dirty Dancing with its 80s, over-synthed version of the 1960s, or like Reservoir Dogs with its Tarantino version of which radio hits truly cut into our ears. Through his choice of music, Anderson finds the perfect epithet for each of his characters. Margot, even if she thinks herself more Virginia Woolf, fighting below the surface, truly is a punk rocker. At age 34, her eyes are kohled, her fur coat drips with age, and her idea of rebellion is smoking cigarettes in secret. There is something so naïve, yet so tuff a la S.E. Hinton, about Margot: she may be a playwright but, really, her plays suck. "Judy Was a Punk" is the only song that can match her. Another character, Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), best friend to the Tenenbaums who only wants to be a Tenenbaum himself, is always playing The Clash - his record is stuck in a groove and he is caught in a rut of drug abuse, despair, and all the other fanciful literary trappings Anderson can afford him. But the greatest triumph of Anderson's film is in Richie's pivotal scene, where Anderson leaves the viewer numb. The scene relies partly on a palate of white porcelein, black hair, and red blood - not unlike a nun falling down the stairs, or the damn penguin in a blender, is the tumult in Richie's head - and it also relies on the song "Needle in the Hay," by Elliott Smith. Elliott Smith writes songs for the withering. On his early, sparser albums, everything was in the moments before disintegration. Phrases, melodies, rhymes -- all were the agoraphobe who fainted at exposure to others. They almost did not want to be heard. His songs are for Holden Caulfield facing the winter with only a deer hunting cap, or for Stuart Little's toy boat fending off the hungry waves, or for Richie Tenenbaum as he gazes at himself, into himself. Smith strums the guitar as if it was his last nerve, and we all feel it. The scene is visceral, explosive, and yet inherently quiet. Although its detached, literary tone can be distancing at times, The Royal Tenenbaums still succeeds in swallowing the viewer whole. We don't necessarily want to be at its dance, but we can't help wanting to participate. At its best, watching The Royal Tenenbaums is like slipping into your favorite corner with clunky headphones and all the time in the world. It digs into you and, like that song about the boy and the girl who did him wrong, you are the only one who truly understands it. Everything around you is silent, but inside you explode.