Film Review: The Life Aquatic

By Patricia Lamkin

In the quirky underwater world of oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), a cynical and depressed version of Jacques Cousteau, there are man eating jaguar sharks, whimsical and beautiful animated tropical sea creatures, and a delightful guitar player who sings David Bowie covers in Portuguese. Sound appealing? Well, yes... but it's all so very strange.


When crewman and old friend Estaban (Seymour Cassel) gets eaten by a supposed jaguar shark during filming of Team Zissou's latest documentary adventure, Steve Zissou is determined to find the mythical beast, film it's discovery, and then kill it for revenge. To complicate matters, joining the Belafonte crew are airline pilot Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson) who may or may not be Steve's son, a pregnant journalist Jane Winsett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) who has them vying for her affections, and a bond company stooge Bill Ubell (Bud Cort) who gets himself kidnapped. Meanwhile Steve's estranged wife Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), the brains behind Team Zissou, gets back with her wealthy ex, Alistair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum), Steve's sea-fairing rival, whose high tech floating lab makes the Belafonte look like a retro junk heap. With the help of his eccentric Team Zissou crew, Steve must thwart Filipino pirates, humble his over-equipped rival, find the terrible jaguar shark, and learn the meaning of fatherhood.

Director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums), known for his dry humor and oddball characters, creates a colorful and pleasantly bizarre film in The Life Aquatic, which has some entertaining moments, but ultimately feels like an experiment gone not quite right. The stop-motion animation of Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) delivers exotic tidbits of fun. Equally strong is the chemistry between Bill Murray's gloomy Steve and Owen Wilson's country gentleman Ned. Cate Blanchett gives a memorable performance as the hard hearted British reporter who loses her composure for Ned, and Willem Dafoe is perfect as the pouty Klaus, the ship's Engineer who always feels left out.

By no means a simple comedy, especially in light of its mostly bitter bittersweet ending, The Life Aquatic is wondrously strange and at times amusing, but the dry points in between are tolerated at best. B -