Review of the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, originally published (under the name R.G. Strait) in OC Metro, 2004.
Whatever you expect going into “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” you’ll come away confounded and amazed. Even for those who are already familiar with the quirky sensibility of director Wes Anderson’s earlier films like "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," this new picture will arrive as something of a shock. Like those earlier films, “The Life Aquatic” is a darkly comic tale, and the cast and crew features many of Anderson’s previous partners in crime, including Bill Murray and Owen Wilson in the leads. But where "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" were character-driven pictures squarely aimed at the arthouse crowd, “The Life Aquatic” has bigger ambitions – in fact, as interesting as the finished film is, it’s arguably a little too ambitious for its own good.
Bill Murray stars as Zissou, a world renowned oceanographic filmmaker of the Jacques Cousteau school. He is bossy and egotistical and he can be an all around pain in the dorsal fin, but he is also effortlessly charming (this is Bill Murray, after all) and his devoted crew would follow him to the Bermuda Triangle and back. When an addle-headed young fellow (Wislon) shows up purporting to be Zissou’s son, Zissou takes him aboard for the troupe’s latest adventure: tracking and destroying the jaguar shark that killed Murray’s partner. You say you never heard of the jaguar shark? Well, “The Life Aquatic” will introduce you to many undersea wonders that Cousteau never imagined.
“The Life Aquatic” packs more plot into its running time than "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" put together. While his earlier films were character studies of deeply flawed, fascinating people, in this new film so much is happening that the flawed, fascinating people have to introduce themselves to us on the fly, whenever the action happens to slow down long enough. There are breakneck action sequences (including honest-to-gosh gunfights… with pirates!) and sea monsters provided by Henry Selick, the stop-motion animation genius who brought us “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” All of this sounds as un-Anderson as could be imagined, but it’s really just a different side of him, the same way Woody Allen could bring us both “Take the Money and Run” and “Manhattan”. Even with so much that’s different, there’s no mistaking Anderson’s ear for dialogue and his carefully assembled soundtrack (vintage Bowie, this time).
For his next picture Anderson will reunite with Selick for an animated version of Roald Dahl’s “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” and it seems Anderson is making a bid for mainstream success. “Zissou” is a strange transitional work for Anderson, not quite indie, not quite mainstream. It will probably baffle many fans of the director’s previous work, but if you’re coming to it fresh this film could just beguile you. It’s certainly like nothing else you’ve seen at the theater this year. Besides, those sea monsters are just so cool.
