Ostensibly based on a nonexistent novel, and told with a narrative influenced by the writing of J. D. Salinger, it follows the lives of three gifted siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure in adulthood.

The children's eccentric father, Royal Tenenbaum (Hackman), leaves them in their adolescent years and returns to them after they have grown, falsely claiming he has a terminal illness.

The filmmakers went to efforts to distinguish the film's backgrounds from a recognizable New York, with fashions and sets combining the appearances of different time periods.

Learning of Henry's proposal via Pagoda, Royal claims that he has stomach cancer to win back his wife's and children's affections.

Richie and Raleigh get the private eye's report on Margot, which reveals her history of smoking and sexual promiscuity, including a previous marriage to a Jamaican recording artist.

Some time later, Margot releases a new play inspired by her family and past events, Raleigh publishes a book about Dudley's condition, Eli checks himself into a drug rehabilitation facility in North Dakota, and Richie begins teaching a junior tennis program.

[10] French director Louis Malle's works, such as his 1971 Murmur of the Heart, were an influence on Anderson, with The Royal Tenenbaums particularly drawing from The Fire Within (1963), where a suicidal man tries to meet his friends.

[21] In inventing the characters, Owen Wilson and Anderson also used neurologist Oliver Sacks as a model for Raleigh,[22] while the notion of Eli writing Old Custer was based on Cormac McCarthy's style of storytelling.

[14] Following a nadir in his career with Larger Than Life and The Man Who Knew Too Little in the 1990s, Bill Murray had opted to focus on supporting parts in offbeat comedies, starting with Anderson's Rushmore and then The Royal Tenenbaums.

Despite Baldwin's claims, The Wes Anderson Collection author Matt Zoller Seitz pointed out in his book that the narration was always present on the screenplay.

[30] Around 250 sets were employed during photography, with art director Carl Sprague saying the crew avoided sites that would identify New York City, even altering street signs.

[31] The house used in the film is located near the famous Sugar Hill in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem in Manhattan at 339 Convent Avenue.

[22] Journalist Jesse Fox Mayshark wrote that, like the similarly titled The Magnificent Ambersons, Anderson's story follows an older mother considering remarriage, creating a stir in the family.

[35] To The Magnificent Ambersons' family-drama template, Mayshark wrote that Anderson added his "naturally redemptive instincts", stressing "forgiveness" over villainizing the guilty.

[8][37][38] Professor Carl Plantinga assessed Royal's motives as shifting from "purely selfish" considerations to genuine hopes for reconciliation when he is removed from the home after his false illness is exposed.

[18] Although the film ends without any of the characters regaining their lost glory, they form new bonds, particularly between Royal and Chas, or realize secret desires, in the case of Richie and Margot.

[40] Film Professor Christopher Robe commented on the loss of loved ones, particularly Royal's parents and Chas' wife Rachael, having an impact on the characters' depression.

[57] Commenting on the literary framework, Browning detailed how the first scene has the camera looking down on the book being checked out at the library, followed by the tone of J. D. Salinger's study of "disillusionment".

[56] Critic Amy Wallace placed it in Anderson's cinematic universe, where "the colors are brighter, the bookshelves are meticulously ordered, the bunk beds aren't just made – they look like you could bounce a silver dollar off them".

[14] The character Richie is presented as a tennis star with headbands and armbands, and sunglasses that virtually hide his face, until his "ritualistic" shaving scene reveals him.

[24] The young performers playing Royal and Ethel's sons and daughter wear the same costumes as their adult counterparts, evoking "arrested development".

[14] Analyst Thomas Caldwell judged the cinematography as unusual, comprising "steady symmetrical medium shots" that help the viewer see the characters' emotional anguish more clearly, particularly in their eyes.

Mercado assessed the scene with Margot smoking in the bathroom to display "carefully chosen lighting, depth of field, wardrobe, body language, and ...

[73] To mark a decade since its debut, Anderson and his stars returned to the New York Film Festival for a screening of The Royal Tenenbaums in fall 2011.

Scott wrote in The New York Times that it eventually won him over as charming, and that Hackman brought "quick precision and deep seriousness [that] nearly rescue[d] this movie from its own whimsy".

[83] The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle was enthusiastic, praising the film as "like no other, an epic, depressive comedy, with lots of ironic laughs and a humane and rather sad feeling at its core".

[84] Anthony Lane commented in The New Yorker on the setting, which did not truly feel like New York, but "a step-city, or a city-in-law", and said that "the communal oddity" gradually won him over.

[6] In 2013, Time also named Henry Sherman as one of 10 memorable accountant characters in film history, citing his decency, success as an author and lack of confidence in his pursuit of Etheline.

[99] The narration and the way the film follows each family member was reprised in Fox's critically acclaimed television sitcom Arrested Development.

[116] Alec Baldwin, the narrator, has effusively praised the film, including it in his Top 10 Criterion Collection and calling it "arguably one of the most original movies, in tone and style, since Robert Altman's M*A*S*H".