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"There were three extraordinary children in the Tenenbaum family."

The Royal Tenenbaums is pathetically lazy filmmaking disguised as hip and clever, a boring and indifferent comedy that tries to pull the suddenly popular scam of trying to be emotional in its emotionlessness. Wes Anderson, who made the terrific Rushmore in much the same vein, is commendably disinterested in standard Hollywood corn syrup, but this film differs from something like The Shipping News only in its attempts to differ from it. Its characters don't resemble anyone we would ever encounter in real life, which would have been fine if the film did not claim to be some sort of dissection of the American family.

The story is framed, irritatingly, by a narrator reading from a book; look how clever Anderson is. The narrator, deadpanning in typical oh-so-ironic fairytale fashion, tells of Royal and Etheline Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston), two wealthy Manhattanites, but mostly of their children, Margot, Chas and Richie. All three were child geniuses -- Margot a playwright, Chas a financeer and Richie a tennis player -- and all have grown up to be spoiled, maladjusted problem children, now played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson, respectively.

Royal, who has been an asshole and an incompetent father his entire life, wants to get back in good graces with his family, and is willing to fake cancer to do it. Chas is unwilling to surrender his bitterness, and takes his issues out on his kids by being insanely protective of the tykes. The repressed Margot is in a dead-in-the-water relationship with a geezer named Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray). Richie, madly in love with his sister, has been having an identity crisis ever since humiliating himself at an important tennis match.

I've attempted to describe the plot rationally, but the joke's on me: Anderson is an impossibly smug and snide screenwriter who either a) doesn't care about the plot or his characters or b) wants us to think that he doesn't care about same. The result, in either case, evoked a similar reaction from me: indifference. It's obvious that the movie wants to be tender by being frigid, but Anderson's now patented bait-and-switch doesn't work nearly as well here as it did in Rushmore. Maybe he just forgot the switch.

I don't think The Royal Tenenbaums would have stood much of a chance with me anyway, as I hate filmmaking where each character is characterized by a defining quirk and nothing else. Everyone here is a one-joke character: Royal is the grumpy-but-lovable old fart, Chas is obsessive-compulsive, Richie self-pitying, Margot understated. These are good character skeletons, but Anderson doesn't add anything to them. I think that this was a choice rather than a mistake, but it's also a taste that I haven't acquired.

I was similarly frustrated by the infuriatingly symmetrical cinematography, which adds to the film's obsessive "quirkiness." Every single damn shot is framed with a character in the center and either characters or candlesticks positioned to the right and left. Again, a choice, but that doesn't make it any less annoying or boring. What an inept artistic decision.

Of course, if you go see this and get bored, there's always Gene Hackman to liven things up at least temporarily, and I'd pay to watch Gwyneth Paltrow read from the Koran (but only if she did it in Arabic). But with The Royal Tenenbaums, once Hollywood It-Boy Wes Anderson is getting lazy. If he's going to contribute again, he needs to get a new angle, a new attitude and perhaps a less-tiresome style. He can keep the actors.