Blend together Jacques Cousteau’s ocean adventures with ‘The Ballad of Cat Ballou,’ ‘The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie’and ‘Moby Dick,’ and you have Wes Anderson’s new film.
By: Bob Brown
Here’s another signature Wes Anderson comedy. Mr. Anderson has developed, if not a formula, at least a vision of humor where laughter is generated within closed systems: a private school (Rushmore), a rambling mansion (The Royal Tenenbaums) and now an ocean-going vessel, the Belafonte.
He has also developed a virtual ensemble cast who give him the deadpan touch that makes these movies go further than they might with just ordinary people. Bill Murray, for one (who played Rushmore’s Herman Blume to perfection), is the ballast, the anchor and the rudder as oceanographic adventurer Steven Zissou, a smug oceangoing pothead who never cracks a smile. Steve captains a rusted hulk that he pilots to study, well, whatever, as long as he can fund it and film it. And film it he does, in a hilarious spoof of the Cousteau Society films that were ubiquitous once upon a time.
Part of Anderson’s method is to pile on the cast. He overloads his plate with character actors, then milks each one for laughs. The crew is a motley bunch, including Steve’s wife, Eleanor (Anjelica Huston), the brains and main benefactor. Team Zissou are the super-Teutonic engineer Klaus Daimler (Willem Dafoe), topless script-girl/navigator Ann-Marie (Robyn Cohen), cameraman Vikram Ray (Waris Ahluwaria), sometime physicist and film-score composer Vladimir Wolodarsky (Noah Taylor), the financing bank’s "stooge" Bill Ubell (Bud Cort) and assorted unpaid student interns from the University of North Alaska. And oh, yes, the team is sponsored by the pecuniary Oseary Drakoulias (Michael Gambon).
The crew are all issued "Z" monogrammed sweaters, red seamen’s knit caps and a Speedo. They’re never without them. Seemingly everywhere all the time is the ship’s safety expert Pele (Seu Jorge), who strums an unrelenting medley of David Bowie ballads, in Portuguese.
Zissou is trying to bankroll a search for a vicious rare shark that ate his oldest colleague, Esteban (Seymour Cassel). A rival oceanographer and irritant is Eleanor’s ex-husband, Alastair Hennessey (Jeff Goldblum), who runs a foppish research vessel of his own. Tagging along on the adventure to find the elusive shark are Ned Plympton (Owen Wilson), a co-pilot for Kentucky Airlines (he always has Kentucky Airlines gear) who may or may not be Steve’s natural son, and a pregnant reporter, Jane Winslet-Richardson (Cate Blanchett), who develops an affair with Ned.
Merely to say who the players are and what they do is to reveal much of the film’s effect. You don’t so much understand what’s going on as you find out as it unravels. Activities below deck are displayed in a cross-section of the entire ship, a gimmick stolen from Buster Keaton. That’s the largest of many visual jokes that permeate the Wes Anderson universe. As Jane interviews him, Steve is seated in front of a picture-portal. An orca passes by, then passes back, then starts mugging for Jane, waggling around and rolling belly-up.
And although there’s plenty of underwater photography in this beautifully photographed movie, you won’t find most of the sea creatures in a biology text. There are electric jellyfish that shine like dome lights, sugar crabs that resemble striped candy, accordion-like bonefish and a crayon-colored ponyfish whose ribbed body is a ROYGBIV chart.
The episodic plot consists of many offhand bits strung loosely together. This suits the laconic delivery that Bill Murray has honed to an art form. A running gag is Steve’s fondness for Campari and hand-rolled joints. He picks up a three-legged dog abandoned by pirates and, in an afterthought, names it when a name is called for. He casually feeds the orca by climbing a platform and holding a dead fish out so the whale can leap up to get it as if the Belafonte is a rolling Sea World.
While this makes the film one long chuckle, it contributes to a certain unfocused quality, which some viewers may find tedious. There’s no big climax, no huge belly-laugh scene. It just sort of floats along, as if Steve Zissou himself had filmed it. In fact, the Zissou documentaries within the film are perfect takeoffs of Cousteau productions from the 1960s, right down to the content and the loose production values. There’s a joke credit at the end, dedicating the film to the late Jacques Cousteau and the society, while admitting that they gave the movie no support.
Blend together any number of Jacques Cousteau’s ocean adventures, along with The Ballad of Cat Ballou, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Moby Dick (the film or novel), and you have Wes Anderson’s movie. It’s an untidy ship-load of daffiness.
Rated R. Contains profanity, some drug use, violence and partial nudity.

