Director Wes Anderson is in a vulnerable position as he unveils his third feature, The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson's directorial debut, Bottle Rocket, a goofball heist pic, won plaudits for its quirkiness and invention, but even lovers of that movie weren't prepared for what Anderson had in store for them with Rushmore, the immaculately stylized 1998 comedy that put him on the map. The story of a wayward prep-school prodigy and his unlikely and uncomfortable romantic rivalry with a local millionaire, Rushmore was a creation of such odd beauty that once you had fully appreciated its exhilarations, you were at a loss to even guess what its creator would come up with next. In any case, the career trajectory just described has more than a few similarities to the career trajectory of another Anderson, Paul Thomas (he's no relation of Wes), whose first feature attracted attention and respect, who was proclaimed American cinema's great hope with his second feature . . . and then who confounded quite a few admirers with his sprawling Magnolia. Wes Anderson, though, isn't nearly as, shall we say, willful as P.T.A.; what W.A., along with his coscreenwriter, Owen Wilson (who has cowritten and appeared in all of Anderson's films), comes up with in Tenenbaums is the story of a very unhappy family.

There's a brilliant but wildly feckless patriarch named Royal (Gene Hackman), a devoted-to-a-fault mom (Anjelica Huston), and their brood of miserable geniuses: Angry, paranoid business whiz Chas (Ben Stiller); tennis prodigy Richie (Luke Wilson), who loses his knack due to lovesickness; and the adopted Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a playwright and chronically unfaithful lover whose troubles stem, it seems, from her dad's early, unshakable habit of introducing her as his "adopted daughter," and who happens to be the object of Richie's lovesickness. The movie's title has a double meaning, referring not only to the family itself, but to the two different versions of the patriarch that the movie presents: the awful man he is at the film's beginning, and the better man he tries to become as the movie progresses.

Tenenbaums ups Rushmore's ante in every way: It's even more stylized, it has a wider-ranging narrative, it deals with a more complex set of emotional concerns. Although Anderson shot the film in New York City, he avoided recognizable locations and used those places he shot as building blocks for an entirely invented world; in the city that the Tenenbaums inhabit, the televisions and stereos are vintage, the cabs are Gypsy Cabs (it says so on the doors), the only bus line is the Green Line, and there's a 378th Street YMCA. The only things in Anderson's universe that are exactly the same in ours, it would seem, are the records (and even that's open to debate—on our version of the Rolling Stones' Between the Buttons, which Margot and Richie listen to in a pivotal scene, "Ruby Tuesday" comes before "She Smiled Sweetly," not the other way around). Some might find the movie's preponderance of such stuff a mite precious (and, for sure, those who didn't love Rushmore will grind their teeth). And already I'm hearing grumblings from Rushmore fans that this effort is a bit too-too. I had the same uneasiness about the picture until I saw it a second time. Removed from expectations, able to relax my what-happens-next edginess, I began to appreciate the film on a different level: The subtleties of Hackman's performance, in particular; the nuances of the writing; the poignancy beneath the carefully crafted surfaces. Tenenbaums is a terrific film, but a challenging one that I think, in order to be seen at all, has to be seen twice: first to be dazzled, then to be moved.