I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" yesterday. All I can say is that it's two hours of my life that I will never get back. Looking at this page of links to reviews of the movie, though, I don't think I can be blamed for thinking that it should have been a pleasant way to greet 2005.
The movie promised solid comedy with some outstanding actors, including Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Cate Blanchett. The ads suggested that the movie would trade on a parody of Jacque Cousteau. SFgate.com gives it a respectful review:
It's almost a great movie. For half of its running time, Anderson maintains a distinct and arresting tone of vague absurdity, and then he loses control and the film begins to dip into silliness. Individual scenes become labored. Yet even at its worst, "The Life Aquatic" is always interesting -- there's really nothing else like it. Although its humor is shrewd and arch, the world of "The Life Aquatic" is so thoroughly imagined that it's hard not to feel on the receiving end of a generous act. It seems the product of a uniquely pure impulse.
The truth was so much less. It was so boring that halfway through the movie I was seriously thinking about leaving. I could sense the desperation of the crowded theater audience who greeted the most anemic attempts at with inordinately forced laughter. Heck, even Bill Murray seemed bored with the movie and he was being paid to act it. (On the other hand, the fine character actor Willem Dafoe certainly brought energy to his character, but what he thought he was doing with the character is anyone's guess.)
While the SFgate review lauds the details that the director pumped into the movie as keeping "The Life Aquatic" "interesting," I think the rest of the audience shared my confusion as to the proliferation of details that went no where. For example, why was it necessary to kill Ned? What was the point of the "mystery signal" from the downed aircraft? Was it really funny that Zissou "sparks a fatty" every ten minutes? (I think that Roger Ebert, who is a study in ambivalence, may be on to something when he observes that "[t]his could have been a scene from "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" if Captain Nemo had been a pothead." I mean, didn't that schtick stop being per se funny back in the '80s?)
This review by Jack Mathews nails part of the "Zissou" experience:
If there's anything more tiresome in film today than hip irony, it is forced irony, and here comes a boatload with Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou."
Save your money. Rent it on DVD if you must.
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