"Life Aquatic": The Belafonte Sinks

i don't see any other threads on this subject on the boards here, so allow me to be the first to tell you: "the life aquatic with steve zissou" is a major disappointment. and this is coming from someone who sees wes anderson as one of our few bona fide auteurs, and for whom bill murray can do no wrong (at least at this stage in his career). but goddamnit if wes didn't desparately NEED someone to help reign his story in (maybe owen wilson, who jumped ship this time around). It's a beautiful movie to watch, but emotionally, it felt empty and contrived.

well, one of the great things about wes's work is that it embraces the possibility of failure and shows it as a painful but necessary part of life. i guess it's no different for him than it is for his characters.

consider this a lesser work.

LIAR!

I had actually heard that this was by far his weakest film...but I'm still really excited to see it. The previews have me in stitches every time I see them.

I've read (specifically on Salon) that the new movie lacks a coherent story line that drives the picture. I'm still excited to see it, for the little details that Anderson puts into his films.

Nevermind.

[Edited on Dec 12, 2004 by zerendra]

well that's a major let-down.

From the previews I saw it looked kind of lame

i saw this too. i was pretty disappointed. i saw an advanced screening at my school on the 8th, though. the sound was crappy and it was hard to see everything. so i think i would have liked it more in a regular theater. i still plan on seeing it again when it has its wide release. i don't want to give anything away so i won't say much, but i agree that wes needed owen as a writing partner. i'm hoping this movie grows on me, but i'm pretty sure it's my least favorite movie of his.

*gulps*

alright, alright, you got me.

i still love the man, though. a thousand "meatballs" cannot change this.

DAMMIT.....I had just dedicated a journal entry to how excited yet apprehensive I was about this film.

53% on the tomatometer

I can't even imagine what a bad Wes Anderson movie would be like.

Wow.

The snippy bits on RottenTomatoes are pretty snippity. Quite a few critics were rather disappointed with it.

I'll still see it, but my hopes are somewhat dampened. I did forsee this somewhat, the CGI fish in the trailer looked out-of-place amid the Murray wisecracks about starting an expedition for revenge.

i thought this movie actually looked really funny based on the trailers i saw. the thing is, those were most of the funny parts. unlike his other movies where the humor couldn't come across in little clips for the previews but progressed throughout the movie. well, those weren't the only funny parts in this movie. still, it looked a lot like a wes anderson movie but didn't feel like one. his next film is animated, right? the fox and mr. something? wonder what that's gonna be like

i'll see this 10 times over shit like polar express anyday.

I just saw Ebert and Roeper give it big thumbs down. Basically the same thing, they're normally big fans of Anderson but were hugely disappointed with this one, the jokes mostly fall flat in the rare occasion that there are any.

Oh well, I guess everyone has a flop now and then. I eagerly await the next one.

Well, was Murray at least good in Garfield? Like, relative to his surroundings?

I'll still see it.

*cough*

How can this possibly be bad?

Sigh.

At least the soundtrack looks good.

A fine comedic actor cannot be held accountable for animated sins.

yeah. it didn't seem like wes anderson; it seemed like somebody trying to do wes anderson

Damn. I was really looking forward to this, too.