THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU Review: Bill Murray d: Wes Anderson

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (2004)

Direction: Wes Anderson

Cast: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, Bud Cort, Seu Jorge, Robyn Cohen, Seymour Cassel, Waris Ahluwalia

Screenplay: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach

Waris Ahluwalia, Michael Gambon, Anjelica Huston, Noah Taylor, Bud Cort, Bill Murray, Seu Jorge, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Those who roll in the aisles laughing whenever Bill Murray raises a tired eyebrow, or when he indicates boredom through sideway glances, or when he sighs with the air of someone who has seen it all, will love Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. On the other hand, those of us who find Bill Murray's chronic ennui contagious might consider looking for entertainment elsewhere.

The story of oceanographer/TV-personality Steve Zissou's quest for revenge against a mythical shark that dined on his deep-sea-diving partner (Seymour Cassel, a 1968 Academy Award nominee for John Cassavetes' Faces), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is an overlong, aimless mix of existential drama, adventure B-movie, and parody of the old Jacques Cousteau documentaries. In large part because of Murray's flat non-performance as the Steve Zissou of the title — the movie should have been titled "At Sea with Bill Ennui" — The Life Aquatic fails on all counts.

In order to find the elusive aquatic beast, Zissou recruits a motley crew of assistants and hangers-on, including his estranged wife, Anjelica Huston; Southern pilot Owen Wilson, who may or may not be Zissou's son; overly tanned journalist Cate Blanchett; a layabout Brazilian singer (Seu Jorge of City of God); and assorted youthful bit players.

All types of mishaps take place during the journey, from an attack by Southeast Asian pirates to (maybe) father-son rivalry for the attention of the tanned reporter. Yet, no matter how many turns Wes Anderson and co-screenwriter Noah Baumbach come up with, little of interest actually takes place on screen.

Crises and red herrings — such as the mystery behind Zissou's "son" — are thrown into the narrative mix, but those turn out to be mere distractions, leading nowhere in terms of plot or character development. Compounding matters, the dialogue is full of throwaway lines that should have been discarded long before shooting began. Those lines are supposed to add a quirkily humorous flavor to the proceedings, but the problem is that they sound neither quirky nor humorous.

Yet, despite its myriad shortcomings, Wes Anderson's film does have its (however few and far between) points of interest. Anderson's characters are always doing something, and every now and then those bits of business that take place in the background are quite funny — especially when juxtaposed against the general dullness in the foreground.

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