OxfordPress.com

Grade: B+

Verdict: Cheerfully quirky — and I mean that in a good way.

Details: Starring Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Danny Glover and Gwyneth Paltrow. Directed by Wes Anderson. Rated R for language, drugs and sexual content. One hour, 48 minutes

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Review: You know the old saying. All happy families are alike. And all dysfunctional families are dysfunctional in their own way. (Well, Tolstoy might have put it that way in 2001.)

In Wes (“Rushmore”) Anderson's appealingly offbeat “The Royal Tenenbaums,” even the individual members of the Tenenbaum family are dysfunctional in their own particular way.

All three of the kids were child prodigies. Chaz, the eldest, was dealing in real estate and high finance before he was 12. Margot, the middle child, won a playwriting grant at 9 and published her first play at 11. Richie, the youngest, was a tennis whiz who turned pro at 17.

Sometime in the late '60s or early '70s — the movie is charmingly vague about its wheres and whens — their rogueish father, Royal (Gene Hackman), took off. Though he and his wife, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), never divorced, they managed to bequest to their brood two decades of “betrayal, failure and disaster,” says narrator Alec Baldwin, adding, “but that was then.”

Now we've got some unsteady adults. Chaz (Ben Stiller) is a fear-ridden widower who dresses himself and his two sons in identical red running suits.

Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) has quit writing, has married a neurologist (Bill Murray) and spends six hours a day locked in the bathroom, soaking in the tub and watching TV. Richie (Luke Wilson) became a tennis sensation known affectionately as The Baumer before suffering a midmatch nervous breakdown on national TV.

Somehow, all three have ended up back with Etheline, who's engaged to her very mild and very devoted colleague, Henry (Danny Glover). When Royal gets wind of this, he decides he wants back in, too. “Dammit,” he says without a thought to his checkered past, “I want this family to love me.”

It sounds kind of convoluted, and it is kind of convoluted, but it's not hard to follow and it's often hilarious. And sometimes, when you're not looking, it sneaks up on you and turns heartwrenching. There are strong echoes of J.D. Salinger's whiz-kid Glass siblings in the Tenenbaums, as well as the blissfully eccentric Sycamore clan from “You Can't Take It With You.”

Toss in a John Irving-esque heartfelt-ironic tone —the one that keeps its distance yet cuts close to the bone emotionally — and you get the picture.

The movie's parts are more than its whole. But those parts, erratic or not, are awfully good. And Hackman tears up the screen as the family's rascally patriarch. It's the sort of performance that looks effortless because the actor doing it is so terrific. The Oscar field is already getting crowded in the best actor category, but Hackman deserves darkhorse status at the very least.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)