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YMMV / The Royal Tenenbaums

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  • Award Snub: At the Academy Awards, the film received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but wasn't nominated for Best Picture, Best Director or any of the acting categories.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The beautiful use of Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay," and Paul Simon's "Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard" is, in the scene where Royal takes Ari and Uzi to see the city.
    • The orchestral cover of "Hey Jude" during the first chapter of the film.
    • Nico's "These Days" when Margot steps off the bus is used oh so brilliantly. Just, damn.
    • The use of "The Fairest of Seasons" by Nico again near the ending.
    • Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time is Here" is used as a minor leitmotif for Margot in a couple of scenes and it surprisingly works very well in selling her depressing and melancholy character.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The scene where Margot is groped by Peter Bradley, a look-alike parody of Charlie Rose, seems nowadays like an eerie prediction of the sexual harassment allegations that years later would claim the real-life Rose's career.
    • There's two of these moments in the scene where Ritchie Tenenbaum attempts suicide by slitting his wrists with a razorblade. The character of Ritchie is played by Luke Wilson, whose brother Owen Wilson (who not only plays Eli Cash in the movie, but also co-wrote the film) attempted to kill himself in late 2007 in a similar manner; Owen had also intentionally crashed his vehicle, resulting in facial bandages, necessitating Wes Anderson write in such a backstory to Wilson's character in that year's The Darjeeling Limited. Furthermore, this scene is soundtracked by "Needle in the Hay", a 1995 song by alternative folk musician Elliott Smith. Two years after the film was released, Smith killed himself (although with a knife, not with a razor blade).
    • The next song on the soundtrack is "Fly" by Nick Drake. Granted, the filmmakers knew Drake had taken his own life...but coming right after Elliott Smith (who they hadn't known about), it adds to the creepiness. Word of God says "Fly" was chosen more-or-less randomly, as it happened to be playing in Wes Anderson's Walkman (when he was working on the scene, or first viewing the rushes...something like that).
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: While it's undeniably a coincidence, the fact that Ritchie has a hawk named "Mordecai" can bring to mind a later, other bird that also happens to be named "Mordecai".
  • Memetic Mutation: "Everyone knows [X happened], what this [Y] presupposes is...maybe it didn't?"
  • No Yay: While it's true that Richie and Margot are not related by blood, they are still step-siblings, which makes the idea of them having romantic feelings for each other, and their Relationship Upgrade at the end come off as squick for some viewers. Even if the film does acknowledge how screwed up the relationship is.
  • The Woobie:
    • Jesus, most of the family can qualify given what they have gone through.
      • Chas is the biggest one. He got backstabbed by his own father, who not only shot him with a BB gun, but was embezzling money from him at the age of 10, on top of that, he had nearly lost his entire family in a plane crash (with his wife dying in the accident) and later nearly lost his kids again and lost his dog Buckley after a car accident by Eli nearly killed the former two and killed the latter. Given the crap he undergoes in this film, it's easy to see why he is the least welcoming towards Royal and why he's so overprotective of his two children. Even if he takes it a bit too far at times.
      • Margot, besides being an orphan, is treated as The Unfavorite of the family by Royal for being adopted and never gets invited to anything, she got her finger chopped off when she was a child, has a string of failed relationships, and by the present day, she is an emotionless, aimless, closed off, depressed individual who spends most of her days in the bathtub.
      • Richie gets off slightly better due to Royal's favoritism of him, but he still counts, given that he is a depressed person who struggles with his romantic feelings for Margot, to the point that had an emotional breakdown on the tennis court after seeing Margot and Raleigh, and nearly tries to kill himself after he learns of Margot's affairs.
    • Given that Raleigh has been nothing but loyal and loving to Margot, his reaction to the reveal that Margot has been cheating on him and hiding important things from him for years is nothing short of heartbreaking, as after finding out, he is reduced to a emotional wreck cuddled up on the couch.

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