Part of Wednesdays With Wes
Internationally famous oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his crew, Team Zissou, set sail on an expedition to hunt down the mysterious, elusive, possibly nonexistent Jaguar Shark that killed Zissou’s partner during the documentary filming of their latest adventure. They are joined on their voyage by a young airline copilot (Owen Wilson), a pregnant journalist (Cate Blanchett), and Zissou’s estranged wife (Anjelica Huston). Wes Anderson has assembled an all-star cast that also includes Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, Seu Jorge and Bud Cort for this wildly original adventure-comedy.
“My rational mind informs me that this movie doesn’t work. Yet I hear a subversive whisper: Since it does so many other things, does it have to work, too? Can’t it just exist? ‘Terminal whimsy,’ I called it on the TV show. Yes, but isn’t that better than half-hearted whimsy, or no whimsy at all? Wes Anderson’s THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU is the damnedest film.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Dec 23, 2004)
“There may be filmmakers more idiosyncratic than Wes Anderson — Jean-Luc Godard is still alive and shooting, after all — but there is no one who can match Mr. Anderson's devotion to his own idiosyncrasy…. If you allow yourself to surrender to THE LIFE AQUATIC you may find that its slow, meandering pace and willful digressions are inseparable from its pleasures.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times (Dec 10, 2004)