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Set entirely in Italy, The
Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou follows famed oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray)
as he sets out to find the shark that ate his longtime partner (played by Seymour Cassel). Steve is an underwater filmmaker a la Jacques
Cousteau, and his last few films have been tanking at the box office. Seeing in his friend’s unfortunate death an
opportunity to reclaim the old magic, he sees to it that their most ambitious adventure to
date will also be their most important film yet.
It’s certainly Wes Anderson’s most ambitious to date. It’s also a rambling, rambunctious mess, so
chock-full of explosions and Portuguese David Bowie covers and a bizarre firefight with
Filipino pirates that it’s easy to forget that there’s hardly any dramatic pull
at all. The
Life Aquatic is—at its best—a charming misfire. The wit is piled on in scads, but there’s no
real payoff. It’s hardly ever funny, at
least not the way Jason Schwartzman’s angsty underachiever was in Rushmore, or
Owen Wilson’s sympathetically inept burglar was in Bottle Rocket. It
bears the stamp of a Wes Anderson film, but it’s the only one so far that
doesn’t sting you at some point with a little soulful significance.
And despite his winning smirk, Murray must bear some of the blame. The man is a delight to watch onscreen and Anderson
makes no bones about the fact that he made Aquatic just to pal around with Murray
in a gorgeous foreign country. But anyone who
remembers Murray’s backhanded shout-out to his cast—still lounging across the
pond on the film’s hyper-extended shoot—during last year’s Golden Globes,
saw a confused and irritated man and Murray’s performance reflects that. His Steve Zissou is a genial, if antiquated
specimen.
Zooming about on underwater gear
from the old days (his mini-sub bears the name of his first wife, crossed-out in favor of
the less personal “Deep Search”), Team Zissou still leads a pretty cushy
existence. Not even the appearance of
Steve’s long-estranged son Ned (Owen Wilson, in a bogus southern accent and lame
“Air Kentucky” pilot’s get-up) can shake up the proceedings all that much. Ultimately, the big hang-up for The Life Aquatic is its lack of any pressing
hang-ups. Steve has neither the self-hatred of Murray’s complacent dad in Rushmore, who declared war on a teenager over the
attention of a pre-school teacher, nor the crass salesmanship of Gene Hackman’s Royal Tenenbaum, who faked
cancer to worm his back into his abandoned family (the missing-father dynamic fomenting
here is threatening to turn Anderson into a twee Steven Spielberg). And without an urgent emotional fulcrum,
Anderson’s films quickly devolve into idiosyncratic fairy-tales in retro jogging
suits.
The Life Aquatic presents a
sticky critical situation. While the film will
likely be a crushing disappointment for any Anderson fan, who outside his circle of
followers will see it? A finicky, cultish
filmmaker who has inspired a legion of finicky, cultish fans, Anderson’s films never
had the teeth for true crossover appeal in the first place. Instead
they’ve glided by on their characters’ wounded deadpan throwaways and
symmetrical framing. Drunk on chianti and an
inflated budget, Anderson wastes a lot of talent here; Anjelica Huston, so wonderful in Tenenbaums, disappears as a shrill heiress, reduced
to smoking brown-wrapped cigarettes in every scene. Jeff
Goldblum turns up as Alistair Hennessey, Steve’s main rival in oceanography (“Be
nice to Alistair, he’s my nemesis”), but he’s given nothing to do except be
rich and ambiguously gay. On the other hand,
Bud Cort (Harold from Harold and Maude) milks his every moment for
big laughs as a “bond-company stooge” who tags along on the big mission. Anderson’s biggest problem in the past has
been drowning his characters in his production design, so it’s sad to see the
filmmaker himself sinking under the weight of his own ambition.
- Jesse Paddock
