Movie Leaves Audience Out at Sea

 

by: Josh Marks

 

Director Wes Anderson misses the mark in his ambitious new film “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” The movie has its moments but unfortunately it doesn’t connect the way Anderson’s prior films did – Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.

           

The scenes off the coast of Italy are spectacular and the animated sea creatures are impressive. The cast, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett and Jeff Goldblum, are all excellent. There are some hilarious and awe-inspiring scenes involving pirates and a Jaguar shark respectively. These good qualities however cannot make up for a movie that for the most part metaphorically feels as if it is drifting out at sea – never really starting on the journey.

           

Murray plays Steve Zissou, an internationally acclaimed oceanographer with an offbeat personality similar to Jacque Cousteau – who the film was dedicated to. He sets off an expedition to find, and possibly kill, the Jaguar Shark that ate his partner during their last voyage. His eccentric Team Zissou crew includes an airline co-pilot who claims to be Zissou’s long-lost son (Ned Plimpton played by Owen Wilson) and a journalist doing a story on the adventure (Jane Winslett-Richardson played by Cate Blanchett). Along the way they are side-tracked by obstacles including a rival crew called Operation Hennesey, led by Alistair Hennesy (Goldblum).

           

The relationship between Zissou and Plimpton is not fully developed and the feelings they both have for Blanchet seem weirdly out of place and unnecessary. These and other distractions throughout the movie make the conclusion anticlimactic.

 

It is a shame so much talent and ambitious filmmaking was put into such a disappointing production. Anderson has, in his more land-locked movies, delivered some hilarious and poignant films. The “Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” just aimlessly floats out to sea.