Wonderfully Strange - Beautiful Colors - What Is Real?
I think if everyone would stop referring to the Wes Anderson movies as comedies we would all be better off. "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is not about making the audience laugh. Yes, there are times you will laugh, but there are also times you will cringe, and there are other moments for just about everything else. What kind of movie is it? It really isn't something that can be given a single label. Yes, there are all kinds of jokes, but aren't they in the service of something more than simple laughs? Hearing David Bowie songs in Portuguese with an acoustic guitar is not only funny, it is kind of beautiful.
A simple joke is the name of Zissou's ship. The Belefonte is clearly a play on Cousteau's Calypso as are the crew's red knit caps. However, some of the humor is quite tough. Think of the scene with Jeff Goldblum's Alistair Hennessy playing cards with his pirate captors as Steve Zissou comes in the room. What follows is funny, but grim at the same time...
The 2-Disc Special Edition is the way to go!
There's always a certain amount of trepidation when a filmmaker like Wes Anderson, known for making intimate and personal films, starts making movies on a more ambitious scale - bigger budgets and movie stars in an attempt to appeal to larger audience - that he will lose all of the qualities that made his movies so interesting in the first place. Easily his most accomplished film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou merges his stylized dialogue and quirky characters with elaborate sets and action set pieces in an exotic locale.
Anderson's career has been building up to this film. With The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson was able to juggle a large cast of name stars while still maintaining his artistic integrity. With Life Aquatic, he continues to use stars but has upped the ante in production values and scope. However, he has not lost the intimate feeling that all of his movies possess. No matter how ambitious or big the scale, his films have hand-crafted feel to them. One gets...
Hilarious, Bizarre, Not To Be Taken Seriously, & Definitely Not A Film For Everyone!
Truth be told...this is NOT a film for everyone - definitely not a mainstream movie. I personally enjoy writer-director Wes Anderson's somewhat eccentric, (bizarre?), style. However, if you watched "Rushmore" and/or "The Royal Tenenbaums" and did not crack a smile, or thought about turning off the DVD player, you should stop reading here. "The Life Aquatic" is not for you. See, how helpful I have been? Now you don't need to read the entire review.
For those of you who have chosen to remain with me, Bill Murray is at his best here - wry, witty, wacky, clever, typically dead pan, totally self-absorbed, and once in a while, comedically tragic...or morosely sentimental! Think of this as a mega-fish story, with Murray as Steve Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau kinda guy. He, just like Cousteau, is an internationally famous oceanographer, who makes underwater documentaries, and wears a Cousteau-like knitted red cap - but Steve's has a pom-pom on top of his. Unlike Cousteau, however,...
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