Reviewed by Robyn Ludwig

Yet another smugly offbeat quirk-fest from Director Wes Anderson, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is an overdose of whimsy sure to pass through you faster than a bad piece of fish.  Bill Murray stars as washed-up Jacques Cousteau wannabe Steve Zissou, determined to undertake an expensive undersea expedition to avenge the death of his former First Mate at the hands and jaws of a mysterious Jaguar shark.  Laying out cash for this eccentric adventure and its associated documentary film is his dispassionately estranged wife Eleanor Zissou (Huston).  

With a roster of oddballs that includes hypersensitive engineer Klaus Daimler (Dafoe) and a safety officer who sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese, the crew of the rusting Belafonte sails out of port along with Kentucky Airlines pilot Ned Plimpton (Wilson) - who may or may not be Zissou's long-lost illegitimate son - and visibly pregnant reporter Jane Winslett-Richardson (Blanchett) - who promptly begins to question her membership in the Zissou fan club. Along the journey, hapless Team Zissou must contend with piracy, kidnapping, mutiny, near-bankruptcy, and competition from rival oceanographer Alistair Hennessey (Goldblum). 

All of these bizarre happenings are, of course, handed with a relentless drollness and self-satisfied satire that elicit more smiles than hearty laughs. After a promising start, The Life Aquatic beings to lag terribly, and at nearly two hours, sinks under the weight of its own superficial cutesiness. Still there is much to admire in this film:  among the many strong individual performances, Murray's deadpan comic timing holds together the admittedly watery script. The cinematography shows occasional waves of brilliance, the stop-motion animated sea creatures are hopelessly charming, plus most of the set pieces, in particular the barely seaworthy Belafonte, are downright ingenious. Unfortunately, Anderson has sailed these seas before – The Royal Tenenbaums featured the same all-star cast and capricious style of storytelling, and just like The Life Aquatic, it wore out its welcome after a few short scenes.