The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)

The Life aquatic With Steve Zissou is a 2004 adventure dramedy by independent comedy director Wes Anderson, it is his fourth feature film and stars many actors that he regularly uses and some actors that would go on to become regulars throughout his filmography. The film follows Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson regular- Bill Murray) a famous documentary film maker who mainly works with sea life. One day when Steve and his best friend Esteban Du Plantier (Seymour Cassel) are exploring the ocean for their latest documentary Esteban is eaten by a shark like fish with spots across its body which Steve names the jaguar shark, weeks later when Steve shows off the events of that faithful trip he is laughed off by the community as crazy and is left depressed and dishevelled. But when he is found by a man named Ned Plimpton (Wes Anderson regular- Owen Wilson) who may or may not be his son, Steve welcomes Ned into his line of work and with some money Ned has inherited Steve and his crew consisting mainly of Klaus Daimler (Wes Anderson regular-Willem Dafoe), Eleanor Zissou (Anjelica Houston) and Pele Dos Santos (Seu Jorge) along with a pregnant journalist named Jane Winslet-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), rival marine biologist Alistair Hennessey (Wes Anderson regular-Jeff Goldblum) and a group of unpaid interns go out on a journey to track down the Jaguar Shark and prove that it really exists. Along the way the unlikely crew are confronted with romance, pirates and the issues of parenthood as they make their way across the sea in Steve’s highly customised boat the Bellefonte. The film is good it’s funny, interesting and has that unique Wes Anderson visual style that has become unanimous with his work, but that’s where my biggest problem with the film arises in its visual style at its purest a Wes Anderson film should look artificial like a living art piece like literal eye candy (just look at Fantastic Mr Fox and Grand Budapest Hotel to see this) the issue is that certain areas in this film are based off of actual locations such as Rome this means that they can’t be given that unique and colourful look that Wes Anderson films go for making it feel less like a Wes Anderson film, luckily when the film is set on the boat it begins to feel more like a Wes Anderson film with his unique shot types and set design shining through but the scenes in actual places and locations makes the design less easy to see and lesser used than his other films making it not really feel like a Wes Anderson film. But this doesn’t make the film bad it’s still funny, it’s still dramatic and it still has that unique Wes Anderson charm that many people have come to love it’s not his best work but its still an undersea adventure that I would invite you to dive into.