The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Could Be Better

For a movie with no glaring flaws, The Life Aquatic has an uncanny ability to expose Wes Anderson's shortcomings as a filmmaker.

Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are excellent pictures, but they're not as powerful and emotionally resonant as they've been hailed to be. In all likelihood, the strong response they received had more to do with Anderson's audience than Wes himself. People who were awkward and disaffected in high school saw themselves in Rushmore. Disaffected people with dysfunctional families and art nerds saw themselves in The Royal Tenenbaums.

His fans' identification with the characters and their projection onto them made the movies seem like transcendent cinematic experiences when the films weren't that different from the smart and straight-ahead comedy of his first feature, Bottle Rocket. Unless some fans are also aging icons with legacy issues, they might just get a taste of what the rest of the world has been seeing with Anderson's latest offering.

The Life Aquatic is, ostensibly, the story of Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) a Jacques Cousteau figure who embarks on a mission to hunt and kill the shark that ate his best friend Esteban. The premise soon dissolves however. The other characters include an estranged wife (Anjelica Huston), a possible son (Owen Wilson), a colleague with father issues (Willem Dafoe), a pregnant reporter (Cate Blanchett), a smug nemesis (Jeff Goldblum), some pirates and a three-legged dog.

For the most part, it's all very amusing. The script is extremely witty and the stellar cast delivers its steady stream of one-liners with an impeccable sense of comic timing. Willem Dafoe is particularly great with his portrayal of Klaus, the jealous and needy crewman and often threatens to upstage the brilliantly deadpan and droll Bill Murray. Unfortunately, attempts at depth are far less successful, making the audience's connection to the characters almost as fleeting as Owen Wilson's accent.

Even a tragic death toward the end of the film feels more like a dark joke that fell flat than something truly sad. The Life Aquatic appears to be striving for a meaningful portrait of familial relationship and the desire to feel close to another person, but it's far too distant and empty to tackle such a theme. Equally problematic is Anderson's apparent inability to control his sense of whimsy.

The quirky and colourful fairy tale sensibility that made The Royal Tenenbaums so gorgeous to watch occasionally goes too far in this latest film. The ship set that resembles a dollhouse and the jaunty red caps are lovely touches, but the animated fish just look silly.

The David Bowie covers are fun, but they also begin to feel like a little too much after a while. Anderson's unique vision is still a welcome change from the standard Hollywood fare, but when he lets it run too free he begins to look like a latter day Fellini for the terminally twee.

That said, the film is still worth seeing. Despite its problems, this is probably the funniest movie to be released in quite a while. In fact, The Life Aquatic is a fantastic example of Wes Anderson's abilities as a comedy writer. It's just not a testament to his cinematic genius.