The Life Hectic with Wes Anderson

I watched Rushmore (1998) one time and fell in love with it. Its characters were smart, engaging, and sincere in an innovative way. The fact that the film was made in Houston right after I moved there made it all the more attractive. Then came The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), and I didn’t love it at first. It was engaging and intriguing, but it didn’t grab me right away, making me dub it One of Those Movies That Has To Be Watched Several Times, like The Big Lebowski (1998). Now comes The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and I can’t even call it that.

Regarding a film as One of Those Movies That Has To Be Watched Several Times is a type of copout, anyway; I realize that. It’s what you do with movies that are good but not necessarily fully enjoyable the first go-round. Almost all of the Coen brothers films are that way, for example. They’re great on first watching, but they get better with multiple viewings. Then there are movies that are intriguing but not enjoyable at all. Some of the more arty films are this way, especially the really out-there ones like David Lynch’s earliest, Eraserhead (1976). I know they’re interesting, but I don’t want to watch them again, or at least only in an I-can’t-turn-away-from-the-accident stare.

The Life Aquatic is one of these movies, and it may be partly because of my viewing habits that I say this. My wife likes these kinds of movies, so I have to watch them with her, yet she can’t bear to watch more than 45 minutes of a movie in one sitting (she starts feeling like she has to “do something,” which I don’t understand one bit. Like watching a movie isn’t “doing something?” Wait, that’s a sluggard talking…). Watching The Life Aquatic in four sittings really changed the viewing experience, and it pointed out the fact that this is really two different films about the same person.

The first two segments were boring. Nothing happened, and the characters weren’t even compelling enough to make it into a drama. Bill Murray is such a non-plus actor that he appears to bumble through every scene he’s in, and it didn’t work in this movie because the dialogue or situations didn’t make up for it. I wanted to quit watching after the first segment, but my wife wanted to keep going. During these first two segments, I felt as though the movie violated rule number two: a movie must be enjoyable in order to be good. There are different ways to be enjoyable, of course, but this one didn’t have any of them. I wanted to stop and burn it like we did with 13 Going on 30.

But then came the third segment, and all of sudden this drama turned into an action film. Suddenly, the characters were chasing pirates and I was intrigued. The change happened very suddenly, but it was also quite subtle. One moment Bill Murray is tied up and trying to stay alive and the next moment he is wielding a machine gun blowing people away.

And it worked…sort of. The change is purposeful, I know: it demonstrates Steve Zissou’s mid-life crisis and change and he becomes a hero for his son. Where he was a bumbling fool, he is now a rejuvenated man who takes charge. He rescues his crew and destroys the bad guys in the process.

It doesn’t make up for the first two segments, however. Even if it’s purposeful, I still have to enjoy a film. So I rate The Life Aquatic barely fresh.

Grade for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: 6