Steve Zissou and the Life Aquatic

STEVE ZISSOU AND THE LIFE AQUATIC
FOX
RELEASED 18 February 2005
Following his Oscar nominated-performance for ‘Lost in Translation’, Bill Murray has re-teamed with director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tennenbaums) to play the fictional diver and all-round adventurer Steve Zissou, aided by his best friend Esteban, and backed up by the eclectic Team Zissou who sail aboard the good ship Belafonte. The team document their undersea adventures and present them to a gathering of fellow nautical comrades in lavish premieres. Their next adventure is focused on the hunt for the mysterious ‘Jaguar Shark’, which has eaten Estenban while Steve was in the water next to him. Steve is devastated and vows revenge.
Among the regular members of Team Zissou along for the ride are Steve’s wife Eleanor (Angelica Houston), the insecure but devoted German Klaus (Willem DaFoe), and a Brazilian man who plays Bowie songs in Portugese (Seu Jorge). Among the new recruits are an English journalist called Jane Winslett-Richardson (Cate Blanchett) who also happens to be pregnant (in real life too), and Ned Plimpton (Owen Wilson), a pilot from Kentucky who may or may not be the son of Steve. Oh, and some University interns (who don’t get the Team Zissou clothes but a t-shirt with ‘Intern’ written on it, and are generally treated with disdain).
Adventures involve Team Zissou raiding their rich competitors’ (played by Jeff Goldblum) science station, coming face-to-face with real-life pirates, and mounting a rescue operation for their on-board ‘bond’ stooge.
There’s so much to love about ‘The Life Aquatic’ but there isn’t quite so much to fully understand. Team Zissou lurch from one disaster to the next, and it’s not surprising when Bill Murray admits to his possible son that everyone has just been ‘picked up somewhere along the way’. You get the impression that no-one has any formal training, making for the craziest-looking bunch of ‘scientists’ you’re likely to see. In their red bobble hats (the Asian camerman wears a red turban), sky-blue jumpsuits (or silver wetsuits) and custom-made adiddas sneakers, they look like a gym class from the sixties. When they mount their daring rescue bid, jumping around like a comedy troupe as the music blasts out a cheesy action theme, I smiled wider than a cheshire cat. Truly one of the funniest things you’ll see all year.
Bill Murray plays Steve Zissou like a dead-pan James Bond, and is completely unaware of how daft he looks. He drinks Campari (on the rocks) while sitting in his hot air balloon trying to kiss Cate Blanchett’s prim journo. He has some odd bleepy music piped into the Team’s undersea headsets via an extendable car aerial on top of the helmet. And he gets involved in a shoot-out hopping about in his silver wet suit.
The rest of the cast is excellent, with Cate Blanchett literally glowing as the pregnant reporter who takes a shine to the keen Owen Wilson, and Willem Dafoe adding to his vast and varied CV with the ‘wet’ but loyal Klaus.
The Portugese Bowie soundtrack is inspired and all the wierd and wonderful sea creatures are created by Henry Selick’s animation studio (‘Nightmare Before Christmas’, ‘James & the Giant Peach’), my favourite being the crabs that look like stripey boiled sweets!
‘The Life Aquatic’ will be an aquired taste, considering how barmy it all is, but if you like the bizarre and quirky, this could well be the ‘life’ for you.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE