‘Tenenbaums’ oddly likable

In theaters

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, directed by Wes Anderson. Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson. 103 minutes. Rated R.

Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” begins with the same irresistible, off-beat quirkiness of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amelie,” only instead of using Paris as his backdrop, Anderson uses a trippy, cleaned-up version of New York.

His film, co-written with actor and childhood friend Owen Wilson, who also co-stars, feels like J.D. Salinger by way of John Irving and director Todd Solondz. It’s filled with disenfranchised, disagreeable people oddly likable – even lovable – despite their bitter, sullen demeanors.

They are emotionally and, in some cases, physically scarred, which compounds the root of their dysfunction but doesn’t undermine their appeal.

In fact, the gloom and doom hanging over their heads enhance their appeal, which is probably why they’ll remind some of the walking wounded in Edward Gorey’s famously dark illustrations.

As narrated by Alec Baldwin, “The Royal Tenenbaums” is about the turbulent life of an eccentric family of geniuses who once had the world in the palms of their gifted little hands.

Adopted daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright at age 9. Chas (Ben Stiller) was a renowned financial trader in his early teens who also bred Dalmatian mice, and Richie (Luke Wilson) was the youngest tennis champion ever to lob a ball on the international tennis circuit.

When the family patriarch, Royal (Gene Hackman), abandoned them and their mother, Ethelina (Anjelica Houston), sometime in the ’70s, the family fell apart, with everyone turning their once promising lives into enormously disappointing disasters frequently subjected to ridicule in newspapers, magazines and on television.

Now, two decades later, Royal is eager to right his wrongs before his finances run dry. Insinuating himself back into his family’s lives, he pretends he’s dying of cancer, a hoax that may work for a while, but one that comes with an unexpected twist – what if Royal, as loathsome as he is, really does care for these people? “Dammit,” he says at one point, “I want this family to love me.”

But will they love him back?

With Bill Murray and Danny Glover in supporting roles, “The Royal Tenenbaums” has the punch of Anderson’s “Rushmore” and the kick of his 1996 film, “Bottle Rocket,” but it somehow squeezes in more tics and neuroses than those films combined. Too many of its situations feel forced, but Anderson’s affection for his characters is so great – and his cast is so strong – those moments are balanced, working better than they should in a film that once again proves why Anderson is a director to watch.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

JEEPERS CREEPERS, written and directed by Victor Salva. 90 minutes. Rated R.

As cheesy horror movies go, Victor Salva’s “Jeepers Creepers” isn’t as bad as, say, 1972’s “Night of the Lepus,” which featured scores of mutant cottontail bunnies growing to the size of dinosaurs and eating their way through everything – including, in some cases, the film’s set.

It also isn’t as bad as, say, 1963’s “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies,” or 1967’s “Hillbillies in a Haunted House,” or even 1965’s “Monster-a-Go-Go,” which opens with a line that says it all for the experience of watching “Jeepers Creepers”: “What you’re about to see may not even be possible within the narrow limits of the human mind.”

Folks, what you’re about to see may not be possible within the threadbare limits of a lobotomized mind.

In the film, squabbling siblings Trish (Gina Phillips) and Darry (Justin Long) are on their way home from college when they’re forced off the road by a huge, evil-looking truck.

Later, they pass a deserted church and find the same truck in the front yard – with a large man shoving corpses down a drainage pipe.

Curious to learn if what they saw was real, Trish and Darry investigate and find all sorts of interesting things down that pipe. Indeed, as the film’s stock black psychic, Jezelle Gay Hartman (Patricia Belcher), proclaims in one of the film’s more memorable scenes, what’s down that pipe is like “some psycho version of the Sistine Chapel!”

Later, the helpful Jezelle clears up the mucky plot. “That thing down there,” she states, “wakes up ever 23rd spring to eat people for 23 days!”

We never learn why, not that it matters. What matters here is that the film’s winged monster was enough to bring the actress Eileen Brennan out of retirement. Watching the former star of “Private Benjamin” stomp around in her dusty pink mules while firing a shotgun into an exploding cornfield is one of the more unforgettable sights Hollywood offered last year.

Grade: D

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.