Murray shines through Anderson's artificial half-movie -- always offering something sadder and deeper. Still, it's hard to get invested when the director won't stop winking.
Comment
12/21/04
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
52
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:170
Fresh:89
Rotten:81
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is getting soaked by many critics, who call it smug, ironic and artificial. Still, others have praised the movie’s sheer uniqueness, eccentricity and whimsy.
Theatrical Release:18-02-2005
Synopsis: 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... [More]
Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Anjelica Huston
Director: Wes Anderson
Reviews for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
121 - 140 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
An often clever film with some genuine laughs and a playful streak.
12/21/04
Chock-a-block with acerbic humor and a tongue-in-cheek presentation perpetually on the brink of narrative collapse.
12/21/04
[C]inematic flotsam that drifts quickly out of mind.
12/21/04
Click to read the article
12/19/04
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12/18/04
Not as fresh and surprising as, say, Rushmore. Still, I'll take a filmmaker who keeps using the same interesting devices over one who doesn't even know any.
12/18/04
If there's anything more tiresome in film today than hip irony, it is forced irony, and here comes a boatload.
12/18/04
The story (written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach) meanders in such a meaningless way that the visual details, as carefully wrought as they are, come off as mere props.
12/18/04
Flat, unfocused and weirdly random.
12/18/04
The film is very prickly, and full of offbeat humor that isn't welcoming to anyone who doesn't buy into the cold, wooden tone.
12/18/04
Often, The Life Aquatic borrows too much from the characters of Anderson's earlier work. But the humor and imagination of the piece more than makes up.
12/17/04
The problem with Life Aquatic is not that it’s not funny, but that Anderson is already repeating ideas and recycling characters from his other films.
12/17/04
This waterlogged bit of whimsy is the cinematic equivalent of a belly-flop.
12/16/04
Lately, I’ve complained that “gross” does not equal funny. Well, “weird” does not equal “entertaining.”
12/16/04
Smug and slow moving. Who cares about Steve Zissou? For Anderson, it is all about the boat.
12/16/04
It’s sad to see the filmmaker himself sinking under the weight of his own ambition.
12/14/04
This is one of the most irritating, self-conscious and smug films of the year, working neither as a dark comedy nor a character study.
12/13/04
Worth mentioning in the same breath as Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums? Absolutely not.
12/13/04
blithely flits from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again with such an agile sleight-of-hand that the two eventually merge into a surprisingly coherent amalgam
12/13/04
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