The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

I watched two movies tonight which had a surprising commonality in emotional tone, Elephant and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which had neither raised voices or excited shouting. However in the former it was a conscious strategy by writer/director Gus Van Zant and in the latter it was just Bill Murray getting a paycheck with the absolute minimum energy expended; Van Zant had me on edge through this device and Life Aquatic had me and TS1 asleep inside of an hour.

Murray plays an American Jacques Cousteau, a marine biologist world famous for the films he makes of his expeditions. At a premiere showing of his latest movie, Ned (Owen Wilson) shows up as the son he never knew but sort of heard about a few years earlier; Ned’s mom died a month earlier, spurring him to seek out Zissou. I have little doubt that Steve and Ned are father and son because they share such a lack of energy one wonders if either ever consulted a physician. In other words, Wilson has no trouble aping Murray in what must have been a competition to move the fewest facial muscles.

Anjelica Huston plays Mrs. Zissou, a woman of no small beauty but crucially bought a big checkbook to the marriage. Jeff Goldblum is her ex and Zissou’s main competition for grants and audiences, Cate Blanchett a British journalist grinding her axe against a story on Zissou, and Willem Dafoe is his offbeat, jealous chief aide.

This mess was directed by Wes Anderson and co-written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach but I think Anderson missed whatever Wilson brought to their previous collaborations, The Royal Tenenbaums and the much funnier Rushmore. Maybe it was just an unwillingness to challenge Murray or an inability to move him off his rock.

not recommended