The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)

In many ways this is Wes Anderson's most commercial and mainstream outing. Though still maintaining common themes of his previous films (family, and more to the point the definition of family) With The Life Aquatic what you get is Wes doing, maybe for the first time, an all out comedy.

Yes it stilll has the quirky moments you come to expect but it also has far out whacky "slapstick" moments. Including Bill Murray's steve zissou running into a room of pirates firing a gun, fight scenes, and other aspects that take it away from the more subtle aspect of say Rushmore. That's what i like about Wes Anderson as a director, he is known for his quirky style but he's not afraid to take it to the extreme too. The final job in bottle rocket, the wedding reception in royal tenenbaums and many scenes in life aquatic prove this.

Bill Murray steals the show here and it's a nice change of pace for him. After his more downbeat / subtle performance in the brilliant, Rushmore, he seemed to take roles that suited that style (Lost in Translation , Broken Flowers) but here we see a great mix of the subtle qaulities of Translation and the more out there style seen in ghostbusters or groundhog day. I could pick out so many comedy gems from murray in this film. Jeff Goldblum also pulls in a solid performance here and he and murray bounce comedically of eachother quite well. Owen is as always great and further proves he is at his pure best when working with Wes, no other of his performances come close (see bottle rocket for Owen's shining moment - and first film)

Life Aquatic mixes surreal with ...well not even real.. i guess hyper reality. Everything is slightly off kilter, which adds to the charm. One of the most interesting points of the film is that of the fish. Being a film about an oceanographer, sea life is present. However the marine life is animated using stop motion animation. A form of animation i love, however here, it never quite mixed well. It seemed too odd, the characters themselves were odd enough to sustain the zaney-ness of the film. However it does help to further seperate it from his other work.

Further seperating it is the choice of music. Seu Jorge provides the majority of the music with covers of Bowie songs, with the odd original bowie song thrown in there at key moments. The addition of Seu Jorge, who also played a character, who would sit and play songs, seemed a little odd, and a very commercial move.

All in all, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is a brave move for Wes Anderson. I remember seeing this in the cinema and comming out having never laughed so much in a cinema, i was a keen Andersonite at that point already. However on 3rd and 4th watches i can see how this film may dissapoint some Wes Anderson fans. It is more mainstream, it is more commercial, but please, look past that. it still holds values from all his films previous, but with a stronger attempt at broad comedy. Bill Murray is fantastic here and steals every scene, What Wes has done here is create something that will appeal to none fans of Wes, and one of Murray's finesy performances.