The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou   

Steve Zissou: Bill Murray

Ned Plimpton: Owen Wilson

Jane Winslett-Richardson: Cate Blanchett

Klaus Daimler: Willem Dafoe

Eleanor Zissou: Anjelica Huston

Alistair Hennessey: Jeff Goldblum

Directed by Wes Anderson

Written by Wes Anderson &

Noah Baumbach

Odd characters and meandering plots have been a staple for Wes Anderson, beginning with the underrated gem Bottle Rocket to the heartfelt eccentricity of The Royal Tenenbaums.  With The Life Aquatic, however, Anderson has gotten too cute for his own good.  The oddness has been dialed up at the expense of any semblance of a story or reason for existing.  The result is an unfortunate mess of a movie from an otherwise skilled director and cast.

Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) is an oceanographer and documentarian in the same vein as Jacques Cousteau.  His films have been hailed in the past, but he has fallen on hard times lately.  His newest film, entitled “The Jaguar Shark, Part 1,” details a trip where some never-before-seen monstrosity of a fish eats his closest friend Esteban.  Zissou explains that “Part 2” will chronicle the hunting and killing of this shark for the scientific purpose of revenge.

Before the trip, Zissou meets up with Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), who claims to be his son.  Steve immediately becomes taken with his long-lost offspring and asks him to join his team on this last journey.  They encounter pirates, a couple of shoot-outs, and a couple of rescues along the way.

Anderson has once again assembled a top-flight ensemble cast for his film.  Willem Dafoe provides one of the few bright spots with his turn as Klaus, the extremely loyal and often jealous member of Team Zissou.  And Anjelica Huston and Jeff Goldblum give weight to smaller roles as Eleanor Zissou, the brains behind the operation, and Alistair Hennessey, Steve's chief rival.

The problem here is that there isn't much to do.  The movie exists for the sole purpose of being as quirky as possible.  There is no character development, just strange characteristics given to each person who all seem to be devoid of any human emotion.  There's more life to the animated characters in The Polar Express and The Incredibles than anyone in this film.  Most of the time, the actors stare off into space as if just waiting for a queue to deliver their lines.  

There is also no plot development, just corny situations and scenes played purely for laughs that fail miserably until we come to the final confrontation with the shark.  Murray has a few highlights, but he mostly just sleepwalks through the movie, probably realizing that any attempts to provide a solid performance would be futile in the wake of the forced quirkiness that dominates everything.

Case in point, the soundtrack is filled with David Bowie songs sung in Portuguese by one of the Team Zissou members.  While entertaining in a small way, it adds nothing to the film and just becomes distracting as you try to decipher each song.  Then you realize that is the only reason this actor exists in the movie, and you lose interest.  And check out the script girl who is inexplicably topless in most scenes.  There were too many of these blatant scenes or images that screamed out just to be noticed, rather than work within the framework of the story to provide a cohesive film.