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“The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” seemed to have a funny enough premise from the commercials I had seen: ticked-off documentary filmmaker/ocean explorer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) sets out on a quest for revenge against a shark that that took the life of his friend. While on the mission, Zissou discovers that he has a son (Owen Wilson) who joins him in the perilous mission. Since “The Life Aquatic” comes from Wes Anderson, the maker of quirky comedies “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tennenbaums”, which both featured Murray, I expected a quirky comedy. Unfortunately the film is high on quirk, but low on humor, the sum of which is a pretty worthless way to spend 90 minutes.”The Life Aquatic” features a cast of excellent actors, but the only one whose character ends up being funny on a regular basis is Willem Dafoe, who plays emotionally needy German Team Zissou member Klaus. The deadpan Bill Murray is one of the great comic actors of all-time, though his title character is really just more of a quirky jerk than anything else. Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum and the rest of the cast are only moderately humorous.

Unfunny comedies are painful to watch, and “The Life Aquatic” is no exception. Considering the body of work of the director, and the skills of the cast I kept watching the film, waiting for it to get good. It never happened. Since “The Life Aquatic” fails as a comedy, it’ll judge it as a drama. As a drama, it is boring and fails to really make you care about its characters. The revenge storyline is half-hearted. Murray’s deadpan works against the film here, as one really needs to be driven by a palpable sense of passion to travel the world to murder a particular shark. The father-son reunion plot is undermined by Angelica Huston’s character revealing that Steve Zissou “shoots blanks”, and thus cannot be a father. The film has nothing to hold it together, and Klaus’ idiocy isn’t funny enough to make it work.

“The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” is a waste of time. Don’t watch it. Rent “Rushmore” or “The Royal Tennenbaums” instead if you have not seen those. They are quality quirky comedies. It would be a waste of everyone’s time for me to write another word about this film.

0/5 Stars