The Life Aquatic (film): Unpopular film that I absolutely loved

When it comes to director Wes Anderson I am one of those people that I can say that I am kind of bored of his style these days. It started out iconic and unusual but we are at the point now where I feel as though it has run its course and I can identify that it is Wes Anderson almost immediately and I am sick of it. I would like to see him try his hand at doing something a bit different because like other iconic directors such as Guy Ritchie, he has a very distinct style that is all his own but he actually IS capable of doing something else. Wes Anderson seems to stick to kind of the same formula in all of his films and even uses many of the same actors.

There was a time when his approach to film-making was new and fresh to me and The Life Aquatic or the full name, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was something I really enjoyed.

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I first saw this quite a few years after it was released and man oh man does it have some super big names in it. How one man is able to convince Bill Murray, William DaFoe, Kate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, and Own Wilson to all be in the same production and not have the overall cost go through the roof says a lot about how it must be to work for Anderson. I think these stars must just really enjoy working with him because they all must have taken a dramatic pay cut to keep this under the $50 million or so estimated overall cost.

The Life Aquatic is a silly movie, just as all of the other Wes Anderson films I have seen have been and it follows the life of Steve Zissou and it is a bit of a "piss take" on the life of Jacques Cousteau, and the film is actually dedicated to him.

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Steve Zissou is a oceanographer who is considered an expert of all things underwater, and he travels the world with his team of misfits to document the amazing sea creatures when one of his long-time companions Estaban is eaten when they discover a very rare species of shark called the "jaguar shark."

He holds a press conference where one journalist is criticizing his work as appearing a "bit fake" and that is part of the fun of this film because the stuff he has documented in previous documentaries do look fake but when we travel with him we discover that these bizarre encounters actually do happen to him.

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Everything about the way that he runs his ship and his crew is silly and this is the kind of humor that isn't going to appeal to everyone. This is just kind of the way that all Wes Anderson films are though. He has a unique brand of humor that either you get it or you don't and I guess with this one more people didn't get it than did because it was a box office bomb losing $15 million globally before we take advertising costs into account. Normally with big budget films you can add 50% to the overall budget to estimate how much was spent on advertising and if that was the case with this movie, I'm sure the studios were not very pleased about losing $40 million on a rather bankable director with a massive cast.

Professional and normal human critics were in relative agreement about how they didn't much care for this one and I have to say that I seriously disagree with them all about this film. I believe this one is a hidden gem that especially if you are unfamiliar with Wes Anderson, that you might just enjoy as much as I did.

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To me it seems as though the actors and actresses were probably having a lot of fun on set because there are a lot of critically acclaimed actors in this one and for me I would think this could potentially pose a problem because of all the big egos. I guess it wasn't a problem though and perhaps that is a skill that Wes Anderson has - he is just able to keep big egos in check and make it fun enough that everyone gets along.

Should I watch it?

Like I said before, this is going to be a bit of a gamble for a lot of people because clearly the world for the most part didn't care for this one. Every now and then I feel as though the world is wrong though and to me, this is one of the times that they were wrong. I have seen this one multiple times and still laugh at the subtle jokes that are contained all the way through.

I'm going to watch it again right now in fact and I think you should as well.

_{The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Vudu streaming services}