Released 2004
Stars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor
Directed by Wes Anderson

My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn't work. Yet I hear a subversive whisper: Since it does so many other things, does it have to work, too? Can't it just exist? "Terminal whimsy," I called it on the TV show. Yes, but isn't that better than half-hearted whimsy, or no whimsy at all? Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is the damnedest film. I can't recommend it, but I would not for one second discourage you from seeing it.

Zissou is, we learn, the auteur of a series of increasingly uneventful undersea documentaries, in which the momentum is sliding down a graph that will intersect in the foreseeable future with a dead standstill. "The Life Aquatic" opens with the premiere of his latest work, which ends with the audience gazing up at the screen as if it is more interesting now that it is blank. Zissou himself seems to be in the later stages of entropy and may become one of those Oliver Sacks people who just sit there on the stairs for decades, looking at you. His crew would seem slack-witted to SpongeBob. Events on the boat are modulated at a volume somewhere between a sigh and a ghostly exhalation. 

Summary by Roger Ebert

I had the same reaction as Roger that this movie didn't work, but I liked it anyway. The humor is very, very dry, which is something I like, but it lacked energy. The big difference between this movie and The Royal Tenenbaums is the latter had two characters, played by Gene Hackman and Ben Stiller, who infused the movie with much needed energy. All of the characters in "Zissou" are so muted that the movie has trouble picking up any momentum, but I still enjoyed it. While watching it, I felt like my heart and mind were having a battle. My mind knew the movie was failing, but my heart told it to shut up. I think I liked it for two reasons. One was I had a lot of affection for the characters, and the other was I enjoyed the animation. The animation was used sparingly and was as understated as the characters, but it was striking in a muted manner. The scene with the jaguar shark was strangely beautiful and provided the one moving moment in the film. It also made me smile, because Steve, in his narcissistic manner, had to wonder aloud whether the shark remembered him. He was really lamenting the fact that his fame was melting away, and pretty soon no one would remember him. Sorry, Steve, but that's how it is for all of us eventually. --Bill Alward, May 31, 2005