Other Titles • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) • Untitled Wes Anderson Project • The Life Aquatic
Synopses for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
1.
DECEMBER 25, 2004 (NATIONAL)
In Wes Anderson's THE LIFE AQUATIC, a group of oceanic explorers who call themselves Team Zissou embark on a journey to hunt down the "jaguar shark" that ate one of their crew members (Seymour Cassel). Determined to avenge the death of his dear friend, team leader Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) is melancholic about the journey he's about to make. Meanwhile, financial troubles and nostalgia for his past make Zissou behave like a reckless playboy, an aging softy, and a past-his-prime tyrant. Surrounding Zissou are a hodgepodge of eccentrics--a pregnant journalist doing a magazine feature (Cate Blanchett), an airline pilot from Kentucky who claims he is Zissou's son (Owen Wilson), an emotionally needy European (Willem Dafoe), an acoustic guitarist who sings David Bowie songs in Brazilian Portuguese (Seu Jorge), Zissou's brilliant wife (Anjelica Houston), and her ex-husband who is Zissou's seafaring nemesis (Jeff Goldblum). Clad in baby-blue polyester uniforms, Addidas sneakers, and red stocking caps, Team Zissou is a sight to see. And as their deep-sea adventure takes them into dangerous waters where they are attacked by pirates and dazzled by CGI fish, the group finds magic both in their bonds to each other and in the colorful world around them.
In keeping with Anderson's unique brand of escapist humor, these caricatured characters are nothing short of fascinating. While their lives are extraordinary, they act bored, dwelling on banalities like hurt feelings, jealousy, and loneliness. The more absurd their stories are, the more believable their quirky personalities become. With plenty of hilarious moments offsetting the film's tongue-in-cheek sentimentalism, THE LIFE AQUATIC is sure to please seasoned Anderson fans and make new ones of the uninitiated.
(25 votes)
2.
Meet Steve Zissou: legendary underwater explorer, notorious blow-hard, and a man known around the globe for his documentaries about the teeming life beneath the deep blue sea. These days, however, life on land isn’t going so smoothly for Zissou. His best friend and long-time partner, Esteban, was recently consumed by a ravenous jaguar shark. Rumors are starting to spread that he’s losing his touch. And now, out of the blue, comes a genuine Southern gentleman and Air Kentucky co-pilot named Ned Plimpton (OWEN WILSON) who claims he might, or might not, be the long-lost son Steve never got to know.
Imperious, egotistical and endearingly off-course, Steve Zissou is now ready to make his most epic film to date—the one in which he will wage vengeance on the jaguar shark, become the father he never thought he could be, and regain some fleeting sense of his own nobility. Setting sail on his boat, The Belafonte, Zissou assembles a crew that also includes: Jane Winslett-Richardson (CATE BLANCHETT), a mysteriously pregnant journalist covering the story of the expedition; Eleanor Zissou (ANJELICA HUSTON), Zissou’s brilliant wife and Vice President of The Zissou Society; adoring German engineer, Klaus Daimler (WILLEM DAFOE); Zissou’s arch nemesis and rival oceanographer, Alistair Hennessey (JEFF GOLDBLUM); Zissou’s septagenarian producer, Oseary Drakoulias (MICHAEL GAMBON); physicist and original score composer, Vladimir Wolodarsky (NOAH TAYLOR); the bond company stooge, Bill Ubell (BUD CORT); Pelé dos Santos (SEU JORGE), the Brazilian Safety Expert who regularly serenades the team with haunting Portuguese renditions of David Bowie songs. The rest of Team Zissou includes perennially topless script girl Anne- Marie Sakowitz (ROBYN COHEN); cameraman Vikram Ray (WARIS AHLUWALIA); frogman Bobby Ogata (NEILS KOIZUMI) and editor and sound man Renzo Pietro (PAWEL WDOWCZAK).
(22 votes)
3.
In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, director Wes Anderson takes his familiar stable of actors on a field trip to a fantasy aquarium, complete with stop-motion, candy-striped crabs and rainbow seahorses. And though Anderson does expand his horizons in terms of retro-special effects and a whimsical use of color, fans will otherwise find themselves in well-charted waters. As The Life Aquatic opens, Zissou (Bill Murray), a self-involved, Jacques Cousteau-like filmmaker, has just released a documentary depicting the death of his best friend Esteban, who was eaten by some sort of sea creature--possibly a jaguar shark. Zissou’s troubles also include his waning popularity with the public, and a nemesis (Jeff Goldblum) who hogs up all the grant money. Hope arrives in the form of Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), an amiable Kentuckian who may be Zissou’s son. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for fatherhood, Zissou welcomes Ned--and Ned in turn saves Zissou’s new documentary (in which he seeks revenge on the jaguar shark) in more ways than one.
One of Wes Anderson’s greatest achievements as a director to date has been launching the autumnal melancholy phase of Bill Murray’s career, starting with Rushmore in 1998, and Murray delivers a similarly comedic yet low-key performance here. Unfortunately, Zissou is one of the few characters in this ensemble to achieve multi-dimensionality. Even co-star Wilson doesn’t get to develop Ned much beyond Noble Southerner, and he ends up seeming more like a prop for illustrating Zissou’s emotional development rather than his own man. The Life Aquatic probably won’t be remembered as a great film, but it is still one that no Anderson (or Murray) fan can afford to miss.--Leah Weathersby
(22 votes)
4.
Internationally famous oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his crew - Team Zissou - set sail on an expedition to hunt down the mysterious, elusive, possibly non-existent jaguar shark that killed Zissou's partner during the documentary filming of their latest adventure. They are joined on their voyage by a young airline co-pilot who may or may not be Zissou's son, (Owen Wilson), a beautiful journalist (Cate Blanchett) assigned to write a profile of Zissou, and his estranged wife and co-producer, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston). They face overwhelming complications including pirates, kidnapping and bankruptcy. Oscar-nominated writer-director Wes Anderson (2001, The Royal Tenenbaums, Best Original Screenplay) has assembled an all-star cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, and Bud Cort for this wildly original adventure-comedy.
(17 votes)
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