The Royal Tennabaums

The film The Royal Tenenbaums is about a man called Royal Tenenbaum who is the dad, a mum called Etheline Tenenbaum, they have three children called Richie, Chas and Margot Tenenbaum. The children are found to be geniuses from a young age. In first section of the film you are introduced to them at a young age, and their lives, which are quite different to normal children’s. I decided to write about Richie’s life because I found him to be the most interesting person out of the three children, also because you didn’t really get introduced to Royal and Etheline.


Richie is very enthusiastic about tennis I can tell this because whenever you see him as a child he is always wearing a piece of tennis clothing be that a tennis head band or a whole kit, also another way I can say this is because he has been a tennis champion, he turned pro at seventeen and has won the US open twice. Another of his hobbies is to collect toy cars and to play the drums, he has a full size drum kit in his bedroom along with his large collection of toy cars which we see him lying next to with them lined up.

He has a falcon which I assume is his pet because even though the bird has its head covered to keep it calm like they would if they were about to be released to hunt, the family are based in the middle of New York.

Richie also tried and failed as an artist, all of his paintings are in the west wing of the main room which he turned into a gallery. All of the paintings are of his sister Margot, which shows they have a very close relationship another way I can tell this is that they ran away from home to the African wing of the museum for two weeks with Margot.

Even though you see him in sporting wear most of the time he is formal I can tell because he wears a jacket and trousers when he goes out with his dad.

I am assuming that he holds a local radio station talk because you see him talking into a microphone which is linked to a radio transmitter. I suspect he talks about tennis.

Unlike the other two children Margot and Chas, we are introduced to Richie’s friend who is always around his house before, after school, weekends, family visits and more.



I believe that Richie’s character role in the future of the film, will be both a hero and villain, I think that he’ll help is Sister which will make her see him as a kind of hero, I also think that he’ll do something that he shouldn’t like steel an item from somewhere like a shop or museum, which will cause him to need to be saved from what he has done. I am saying this because he has had a very productive and active life but at the same time it seems to be troubled especially because his mum and dad get divorced, even though he lives with his mum. His dad is his favourite out of his parents and he is his dad’s favourite child, his dad takes him out on weekends but Chas and Margot are never invited to go with them.