3. The Royal Tenenbaums Terrible Parenting
In my opinion, The Royal Tenenbaums is Wes Anderson's best film, and most of the credit for that can be laid at the door of one man Gene Hackman. Hackman plays the eponymous Royal Tenenbaum, a former malpractice lawyer and terrible father to the child prodigies, and he does it with gusto By all rights, he should be a terrible character he shot his son with a BB rifle, goes out of his way to crush his adoptive daughter's spirits and pretends he's dying to re-establish relations with his estranged wife. These are not good things, and would certainly be something from which a lesser character would struggle to come back. But still, come back Royal does, and not just in our eyes he actually achieves all he set out to do, despite the unimaginable trauma he's put his family through. I mean seriously, he's been such a dick all his life, and he even manages the seemingly impossible task of going down further in the cast's estimation when they rumble him faking stomach cancer. Yet two saved grandchildren later and Royal's back in amongst it able to take his grandchildren out on the back of a garbage truck and watch his (adopted) daughter's plays, as if nothing had even happened. Really, as much as I love the film and it is my favourite film, by the way it gives off a really weird message about family breakups. It seems to say that the whole heartbreak isn't too much bother really, especially after one jerk-aside manouevre. Mind you, Royal is magnificently awful, so I don't blame them for taking him back.