Anyone else see it yet? I liked it pretty well, but I think it's the weakest Wes Anderson movie yet. Fantastic style & characters, but that's not enough to make a movie great. The "tableau" shots are getting tiresome. I like them, and I realize it's kind of his signature, but it would be ok to have a movie without them. It's interesting to realize that a way bigger budget doesn't improve his movies, or even the look of them. I hope it's not a trend- I think Rushmore was a masterpiece, Royal Tenenbaums less so, and this one definitely not. I hope he hasn't already peaked. Briefly,

Bad parts:
Annoying animation
Owen's accent
Not much plot
Stilted dialogue

Great parts:
Bowie songs in Portugese
Willem Dafoe
The Belafonte set
General artistry

good not great.
jeff goldblum had the best performance, after seu jorge.
and i liked the animation.

B-

I enjoyed this movie more than Royal Tennenbaums and Rushmore, but since it has been well over a year since I've seen either of them, I can't really trust my judgment.

Nice flick.

I agree with most of you. It was ok, but not in the league of his last two. I did like the animation and the general aesthetics, but the story was pretty blah. Wes needs Owen to help with the writing, I think. And where was Pagoda?

Or, for that matter, Kumar or Mr. LittleJeans? ; )

of the three id wish most for kumar. definately his best role.

I thought the movie was magnificent. The context is absolutely brilliant. The film goes behind the scenes of the latest Zissou documentary/tale, illustrating dynamic characters, well-mapped out scenarios, an innumerable amount of underlying themes, and superlative creativity in developing an entirely different world. The conceptualist presents a number of highly creative ideas and thoughts to the audience. To me, this movie's concepts are what make it a stroke of genius. The delivery is just the icing on the cake.

The Life Aquatic made love to my imagination. I loved it.

Agreed. I want to cry & laugh every time I watch the scene with Kumar & Dignan & the safe

I think this movie was the saddest of the three, and I really liked Jeff Goldblum. He's good when he's arrogant.

the three...oh someone needs to go rent bottlerocket! get on it, ashley!
even better, go to the belcourt and see the rushmore/bottlerocket double feature before its too late!
But i will agree that it definately his saddest movie. honestly i like it the least of the four but i know i just need to go see it again and it will overtake bottlerocket.
although i near gagged when the sigur ros part started...i mean i know the majestic sounding music and foreign (fake?) language fit perfectly but...ugh...just so cheesy.
im a fan of the animation. Jeff Goldblum and Defoe steal the movie though.

(Edited by SuperElk at 10:53 pm on Dec. 29, 2004)

I am unaware that there was another movie. Silly me.

And I did cry at the end when Sigour Ros started. It was very surreal and sad.

I might have a crush on Willem Dafoe.

youre not missing much

disagree with you there. what dont you like about bottlerocket?

I think this film was f'n brilliant. A great ode to old seafaring adventure shows like Seahunt with Lloyd Bridges and Jacques Cousteau documentaries. Willem Dafoe was hilarious, and I loved the Bowie tunes in Portugese. I won't compare it to the Royal Tenenbaums. I don't think it's fair to compare one piece to the other...they are just too different, although the signature humor is there.

Jm

it put me to sleep
i cant remember much of it because i saw it a long time ago, but i do remember the script being really lame.
-backlash ensues-
-response: sorry, guess im not cool.

I loved it as I knew I would. However, I wasn't as captivated by it as I was with the previous two. I think the animation was REALLY out of place. I think we would have been better off without many of those scenes. In the last scene, I would have been much happier with a reaction shot rather than seeing the actual shark. All the subplots were nice, but I think the movie dragged quite a bit overall.

As far as Bottle Rocket goes, it's alright to see from time to time, but I'll go ahead and agree with Stopforme (wait, am I allowed to do that?) and say that on the surface, it's not that great. What is great about it is all the elements you see that are refined in Anderson's later movies. The subtle humor is almost too subtle and it's obvious that many of the characters are not played by true actors.

i finally saw it last night.... we missed the first five minutes, so i'm going to need to see it again before i can figure out how i feel about it. so far i really really liked it.

really, the only thing that took away from me was owen wilson's terrible and unnessessary southern accent. i loved the animation, it just seemed to fit with the imaginative, innocent nature of a lot of the picture.

the belefonte set was flat-out awesome. i loved it.

sigur ros was nice, i'm a fan of the band, but it didn't seem to fit all that well... maybe since i'm so familiar with the song on its own i didn't like it in the film. other than that, mark mothersbaugh continues to make me believe he is a film-scoring genius.




i want some zissou adidas.

(Edited by dontstaylong at 1:06 am on Jan. 2, 2005)

Ditto.

i finally saw it yesterday and i loved it too. i did like the animation, and i loved, loved the belafonte set as well. it just looked magical. i liked it better than i thought i would from what people had said about not liking it as much.

I liked the movie a lot. Less than any of his other three, however. Something about the beginning didn't sit right with me... I thought some of the acting was off... Goldblum was genius... the whole thing almost felt like he was trying to appease a particular audience, but I still enjoyed the work as a whole. I loved the animation and thought the bowie songs got old real quick.

Here's my take on the film, filled with my typical film BS (no, really, a Film BS; it hangs on my wall back in Chattanooga). I'll say some things that I suppose count as spoilers, so be warned.

Wes Anderson's other films, in particular Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, have a great sense of unity. They run a gamut of emotions and plumb the depths of their main characters. These characters experience things, learn from the experiences, blah blah blah... all of the things that Western narrative tradition asks for, Anderson delivered, in spades, with a style all his own, a sense of flair, nearly-too-much charm, and a healthy dose of offbeat humor.

What I loved most about those two films in particular were their closing shots: both the "Ooh-La-La" post-play dance and the "These Days" funeral carried with them a sense of summary. Every emotion felt in the course of Tenenbaums, the longing of Royal to be loved by his family, the eventual acceptance, Richie's desire to be with his adopted sister, the humor Royal injected into every situation... all of these are felt in that last shot. The same goes for Max dancing with Miss Cross, with the other characters dancing or looking on in the background. For effect, Anderson slows these shots down, allowing us to take it all in, to re-experience the entire film and see all of the principle players one last time before he cuts to black.

The Life Aquatic ends in the same way, with all of the characters appearing before the camera to be seen in slow motion. And again, I can say that the shot captures every emotion I felt during the film. Bill Murray's blank expression says it all: emotionless.

Aquatic's characters don't have any transformations, they don't learn anything, they don't even really do anything. It's alot of goofy play-acting for the camera with nothing keeping us interested, nothing investing us in the characters. When one of them dies, we don't really feel sad to see him go: we had no real attachment to him anyway.

Anderson's other films end and you feel that everything has been resolved, there are no loose ends. Here, though, things are a mess. "Zissou shoots blanks," we hear, and we're hoping to see where that takes things. Well, it never comes up again. One example of potentially many things that Anderson includes in one scene to give it an edge but seemingly forgets to follow through on. And don't misunderstand me: it doesn't feel like the artful "un-resolution" of, say, an Antonioni film. It just feels sloppy.

I tried to divorce myself from the idea that I need to expect something from the film because it is an Anderson movie (seeing as, in my eyes, each of his first three films improved upon the others, I wanted quite a bit), but it's damned near impossible to do that. Every frame exudes "Anderson." The centered compositions, the Anamorphic 40mm view of the world, the meticulous set design, the iconic presentation of the characters: all of these things serve as a constant reminder to anyone passingly familiar with his previous films that Anderson is still behind the wheel. But he seems to have fallen asleep, executing instinctively the motions he typically goes through while "making a movie," without actually driving all of that style with any sense of purpose.

Maybe I'm being unfair: I saw the film in a bad situation, in a theater packed full of young "hipsters" that were bound and determined to laugh riotously at anything they felt Anderson may have intended to be funny, lest someone discover that they didn't "get" the joke and find them unhip. I've heard others say they didn't find it funny but felt it worked at what it tried to do: something other than be funny. Under the circumstances, I felt like it must be trying to be funny, but I only laughed three times.

Granted, I loved alot about the film: the set, particualrly for the Belefonte, was inspired. Seu Jorge's Portuguese Bowie covers were amazing. But on the whole, it fell flat. Yet, I'm almost glad. All of the press for Anderson from his first three films was so universally glowing; the Lincoln Center crowd were making comparisons to Welles and Salinger: that's some pressure to have on your shoulders. Better, I think, that he learns that he's fallable early on, so he'll actually work at his future works. That's my hope anyway. His best work is just too good, and he too young, for him to keep doing this.

Will

This film was alot of fun, and I'm glad alot of the actors from The Royal Tannenbaums were in it...the style of this movie is just irresistible.

I agree with Wiyum completely. Viewing Wes Anderson as my favorite "auteur" of to-day (yeah, yeah, he doesn't really have a huge catalog of films to really make him an auteur YET, but we all know a wes anderson film when we see one), I was so excited about seeing this movie and was extremely disappointed. Everything was "there" visually, but it had none of the substance of the others. Perhaps he needs Owen after all? Although, ironically, I hated his character AND his acting the most in the film. I was connected to none of the characters and I couldn't have cared less when Owen died --- whereas in Rushmore just Max in his depression with the Rolling Stones song makes my throat clench and Chas in the ambulance with Royal makes me tear up. I tried to like it, but in the end, I had to wipe the forced smile off my face and admit, "I'm not going to say I like this just because I love Wes Anderson, nor will I argue that it was supposed to be this way (not funny or heartfelt) in an attempt to justify the lack of humor, etc." In addition, as my film professor said, any of us film studies students could have edited that movie better. Talk about "kerplunking" scenes. Geez. He better get back on track with his next film, or even the pretentious hipsters who claim they liked this movie won't be on the band wagon any more.